Parsing the file

Parsing the file requires only the name of the file and a single function call, plus error checking. Full code: Appendix C, Code for Keyword Example

        1 xmlDocPtr doc;
	2 xmlNodePtr cur;

	3 doc = xmlParseFile(docname);
	
	4 if (doc == NULL ) {
		fprintf(stderr,"Document not parsed successfully. \n");
		return;
	}

	5 cur = xmlDocGetRootElement(doc);
	
	6 if (cur == NULL) {
		fprintf(stderr,"empty document\n");
		xmlFreeDoc(doc);
		return;
	}
	
	7 if (xmlStrcmp(cur->name, (const xmlChar *) "story")) {
		fprintf(stderr,"document of the wrong type, root node != story");
		xmlFreeDoc(doc);
		return;
	}

    

1

Declare the pointer that will point to your parsed document.

2

Declare a node pointer (you'll need this in order to interact with individual nodes).

4

Check to see that the document was successfully parsed. If it was not, libxml will at this point register an error and stop.

[Note]Note

One common example of an error at this point is improper handling of encoding. The XML standard requires documents stored with an encoding other than UTF-8 or UTF-16 to contain an explicit declaration of their encoding. If the declaration is there, libxml will automatically perform the necessary conversion to UTF-8 for you. More information on XML's encoding requirements is contained in the standard.

5

Retrieve the document's root element.

6

Check to make sure the document actually contains something.

7

In our case, we need to make sure the document is the right type. "story" is the root type of the documents used in this tutorial.