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- # saxes
-
- A sax-style non-validating parser for XML.
-
- Saxes is a fork of [sax](https://github.com/isaacs/sax-js) 1.2.4. All mentions
- of sax in this project's documentation are references to sax 1.2.4.
-
- Designed with [node](http://nodejs.org/) in mind, but should work fine in the
- browser or other CommonJS implementations.
-
- Saxes does not support Node versions older than 10.
-
- ## Notable Differences from Sax.
-
- * Saxes aims to be much stricter than sax with regards to XML
- well-formedness. Sax, even in its so-called "strict mode", is not strict. It
- silently accepts structures that are not well-formed XML. Projects that need
- better compliance with well-formedness constraints cannot use sax as-is.
-
- Consequently, saxes does not support HTML, or pseudo-XML, or bad XML. Saxes
- will report well-formedness errors in all these cases but it won't try to
- extract data from malformed documents like sax does.
-
- * Saxes is much much faster than sax, mostly because of a substantial redesign
- of the internal parsing logic. The speed improvement is not merely due to
- removing features that were supported by sax. That helped a bit, but saxes
- adds some expensive checks in its aim for conformance with the XML
- specification. Redesigning the parsing logic is what accounts for most of the
- performance improvement.
-
- * Saxes does not aim to support antiquated platforms. We will not pollute the
- source or the default build with support for antiquated platforms. If you want
- support for IE 11, you are welcome to produce a PR that adds a *new build*
- transpiled to ES5.
-
- * Saxes handles errors differently from sax: it provides a default onerror
- handler which throws. You can replace it with your own handler if you want. If
- your handler does nothing, there is no `resume` method to call.
-
- * There's no `Stream` API. A revamped API may be introduced later. (It is still
- a "streaming parser" in the general sense that you write a character stream to
- it.)
-
- * Saxes does not have facilities for limiting the size the data chunks passed to
- event handlers. See the FAQ entry for more details.
-
- ## Conformance
-
- Saxes supports:
-
- * [XML 1.0 fifth edition](https://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-xml-20081126/)
- * [XML 1.1 second edition](https://www.w3.org/TR/2006/REC-xml11-20060816/)
- * [Namespaces in XML 1.0 (Third Edition)](https://www.w3.org/TR/2009/REC-xml-names-20091208/).
- * [Namespaces in XML 1.1 (Second Edition)](https://www.w3.org/TR/2006/REC-xml-names11-20060816/).
-
- ## Limitations
-
- This is a non-validating parser so it only verifies whether the document is
- well-formed. We do aim to raise errors for all malformed constructs
- encountered. However, this parser does not thorougly parse the contents of
- DTDs. So most malformedness errors caused by errors **in DTDs** cannot be
- reported.
-
- ## Regarding `<!DOCTYPE` and `<!ENTITY`
-
- The parser will handle the basic XML entities in text nodes and attribute
- values: `& < > ' "`. It's possible to define additional
- entities in XML by putting them in the DTD. This parser doesn't do anything with
- that. If you want to listen to the `doctype` event, and then fetch the
- doctypes, and read the entities and add them to `parser.ENTITIES`, then be my
- guest.
-
- ## Documentation
-
- The source code contains JSDOC comments. Use them. What follows is a brief
- summary of what is available. The final authority is the source code.
-
- **PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO WHAT IS PUBLIC AND WHAT IS PRIVATE.**
-
- The move to TypeScript makes it so that everything is now formally private,
- protected, or public.
-
- If you use anything not public, that's at your own peril.
-
- If there's a mistake in the documentation, raise an issue. If you just assume,
- you may assume incorrectly.
-
- ## Summary Usage Information
-
- ### Example
-
- ```javascript
- var saxes = require("./lib/saxes"),
- parser = new saxes.SaxesParser();
-
- parser.on("error", function (e) {
- // an error happened.
- });
- parser.on("text", function (t) {
- // got some text. t is the string of text.
- });
- parser.on("opentag", function (node) {
- // opened a tag. node has "name" and "attributes"
- });
- parser.on("end", function () {
- // parser stream is done, and ready to have more stuff written to it.
- });
-
- parser.write('<xml>Hello, <who name="world">world</who>!</xml>').close();
- ```
-
- ### Constructor Arguments
-
- Settings supported:
-
- * `xmlns` - Boolean. If `true`, then namespaces are supported. Default
- is `false`.
-
- * `position` - Boolean. If `false`, then don't track line/col/position. Unset is
- treated as `true`. Default is unset. Currently, setting this to `false` only
- results in a cosmetic change: the errors reported do not contain position
- information. sax-js would literally turn off the position-computing logic if
- this flag was set to false. The notion was that it would optimize
- execution. In saxes at least it turns out that continually testing this flag
- causes a cost that offsets the benefits of turning off this logic.
-
- * `fileName` - String. Set a file name for error reporting. This is useful only
- when tracking positions. You may leave it unset.
-
- * `fragment` - Boolean. If `true`, parse the XML as an XML fragment. Default is
- `false`.
-
- * `additionalNamespaces` - A plain object whose key, value pairs define
- namespaces known before parsing the XML file. It is not legal to pass
- bindings for the namespaces `"xml"` or `"xmlns"`.
-
- * `defaultXMLVersion` - The default version of the XML specification to use if
- the document contains no XML declaration. If the document does contain an XML
- declaration, then this setting is ignored. Must be `"1.0"` or `"1.1"`. The
- default is `"1.0"`.
-
- * `forceXMLVersion` - Boolean. A flag indicating whether to force the XML
- version used for parsing to the value of ``defaultXMLVersion``. When this flag
- is ``true``, ``defaultXMLVersion`` must be specified. If unspecified, the
- default value of this flag is ``false``.
-
- Example: suppose you are parsing a document that has an XML declaration
- specifying XML version 1.1.
-
- If you set ``defaultXMLVersion`` to ``"1.0"`` without setting
- ``forceXMLVersion`` then the XML declaration will override the value of
- ``defaultXMLVersion`` and the document will be parsed according to XML 1.1.
-
- If you set ``defaultXMLVersion`` to ``"1.0"`` and set ``forceXMLVersion`` to
- ``true``, then the XML declaration will be ignored and the document will be
- parsed according to XML 1.0.
-
- ### Methods
-
- `write` - Write bytes onto the stream. You don't have to pass the whole document
- in one `write` call. You can read your source chunk by chunk and call `write`
- with each chunk.
-
- `close` - Close the stream. Once closed, no more data may be written until it is
- done processing the buffer, which is signaled by the `end` event.
-
- ### Properties
-
- The parser has the following properties:
-
- `line`, `column`, `columnIndex`, `position` - Indications of the position in the
- XML document where the parser currently is looking. The `columnIndex` property
- counts columns as if indexing into a JavaScript string, whereas the `column`
- property counts Unicode characters.
-
- `closed` - Boolean indicating whether or not the parser can be written to. If
- it's `true`, then wait for the `ready` event to write again.
-
- `opt` - Any options passed into the constructor.
-
- `xmlDecl` - The XML declaration for this document. It contains the fields
- `version`, `encoding` and `standalone`. They are all `undefined` before
- encountering the XML declaration. If they are undefined after the XML
- declaration, the corresponding value was not set by the declaration. There is no
- event associated with the XML declaration. In a well-formed document, the XML
- declaration may be preceded only by an optional BOM. So by the time any event
- generated by the parser happens, the declaration has been processed if present
- at all. Otherwise, you have a malformed document, and as stated above, you
- cannot rely on the parser data!
-
- ### Error Handling
-
- The parser continues to parse even upon encountering errors, and does its best
- to continue reporting errors. You should heed all errors reported. After an
- error, however, saxes may interpret your document incorrectly. For instance
- ``<foo a=bc="d"/>`` is invalid XML. Did you mean to have ``<foo a="bc=d"/>`` or
- ``<foo a="b" c="d"/>`` or some other variation? For the sake of continuing to
- provide errors, saxes will continue parsing the document, but the structure it
- reports may be incorrect. It is only after the errors are fixed in the document
- that saxes can provide a reliable interpretation of the document.
-
- That leaves you with two rules of thumb when using saxes:
-
- * Pay attention to the errors that saxes report. The default `onerror` handler
- throws, so by default, you cannot miss errors.
-
- * **ONCE AN ERROR HAS BEEN ENCOUNTERED, STOP RELYING ON THE EVENT HANDLERS OTHER
- THAN `onerror`.** As explained above, when saxes runs into a well-formedness
- problem, it makes a guess in order to continue reporting more errors. The guess
- may be wrong.
-
- ### Events
-
- To listen to an event, override `on<eventname>`. The list of supported events
- are also in the exported `EVENTS` array.
-
- See the JSDOC comments in the source code for a description of each supported
- event.
-
- ### Parsing XML Fragments
-
- The XML specification does not define any method by which to parse XML
- fragments. However, there are usage scenarios in which it is desirable to parse
- fragments. In order to allow this, saxes provides three initialization options.
-
- If you pass the option `fragment: true` to the parser constructor, the parser
- will expect an XML fragment. It essentially starts with a parsing state
- equivalent to the one it would be in if `parser.write("<foo">)` had been called
- right after initialization. In other words, it expects content which is
- acceptable inside an element. This also turns off well-formedness checks that
- are inappropriate when parsing a fragment.
-
- The option `additionalNamespaces` allows you to define additional prefix-to-URI
- bindings known before parsing starts. You would use this over `resolvePrefix` if
- you have at the ready a series of namespaces bindings to use.
-
- The option `resolvePrefix` allows you to pass a function which saxes will use if
- it is unable to resolve a namespace prefix by itself. You would use this over
- `additionalNamespaces` in a context where getting a complete list of defined
- namespaces is onerous.
-
- Note that you can use `additionalNamespaces` and `resolvePrefix` together if you
- want. `additionalNamespaces` applies before `resolvePrefix`.
-
- The options `additionalNamespaces` and `resolvePrefix` are really meant to be
- used for parsing fragments. However, saxes won't prevent you from using them
- with `fragment: false`. Note that if you do this, your document may parse
- without errors and yet be malformed because the document can refer to namespaces
- which are not defined *in* the document.
-
- Of course, `additionalNamespaces` and `resolvePrefix` are used only if `xmlns`
- is `true`. If you are parsing a fragment that does not use namespaces, there's
- no point in setting these options.
-
- ### Performance Tips
-
- * saxes works faster on files that use newlines (``\u000A``) as end of line
- markers than files that use other end of line markers (like ``\r`` or
- ``\r\n``). The XML specification requires that conformant applications behave
- as if all characters that are to be treated as end of line characters are
- converted to ``\u000A`` prior to parsing. The optimal code path for saxes is a
- file in which all end of line characters are already ``\u000A``.
-
- * Don't split Unicode strings you feed to saxes across surrogates. When you
- naively split a string in JavaScript, you run the risk of splitting a Unicode
- character into two surrogates. e.g. In the following example ``a`` and ``b``
- each contain half of a single Unicode character: ``const a = "\u{1F4A9}"[0];
- const b = "\u{1F4A9}"[1]`` If you feed such split surrogates to versions of
- saxes prior to 4, you'd get errors. Saxes version 4 and over are able to
- detect when a chunk of data ends with a surrogate and carry over the surrogate
- to the next chunk. However this operation entails slicing and concatenating
- strings. If you can feed your data in a way that does not split surrogates,
- you should do it. (Obviously, feeding all the data at once with a single write
- is fastest.)
-
- * Don't set event handlers you don't need. Saxes has always aimed to avoid doing
- work that will just be tossed away but future improvements hope to do this
- more aggressively. One way saxes knows whether or not some data is needed is
- by checking whether a handler has been set for a specific event.
-
- ## FAQ
-
- Q. Why has saxes dropped support for limiting the size of data chunks passed to
- event handlers?
-
- A. With sax you could set ``MAX_BUFFER_LENGTH`` to cause the parser to limit the
- size of data chunks passed to event handlers. So if you ran into a span of text
- above the limit, multiple ``text`` events with smaller data chunks were fired
- instead of a single event with a large chunk.
-
- However, that functionality had some problematic characteristics. It had an
- arbitrary default value. It was library-wide so all parsers created from a
- single instance of the ``sax`` library shared it. This could potentially cause
- conflicts among libraries running in the same VM but using sax for different
- purposes.
-
- These issues could have been easily fixed, but there were larger issues. The
- buffer limit arbitrarily applied to some events but not others. It would split
- ``text``, ``cdata`` and ``script`` events. However, if a ``comment``,
- ``doctype``, ``attribute`` or ``processing instruction`` were more than the
- limit, the parser would generate an error and you were left picking up the
- pieces.
-
- It was not intuitive to use. You'd think setting the limit to 1K would prevent
- chunks bigger than 1K to be passed to event handlers. But that was not the
- case. A comment in the source code told you that you might go over the limit if
- you passed large chunks to ``write``. So if you want a 1K limit, don't pass 64K
- chunks to ``write``. Fair enough. You know what limit you want so you can
- control the size of the data you pass to ``write``. So you limit the chunks to
- ``write`` to 1K at a time. Even if you do this, your event handlers may get data
- chunks that are 2K in size. Suppose on the previous ``write`` the parser has
- just finished processing an open tag, so it is ready for text. Your ``write``
- passes 1K of text. You are not above the limit yet, so no event is generated
- yet. The next ``write`` passes another 1K of text. It so happens that sax checks
- buffer limits only once per ``write``, after the chunk of data has been
- processed. Now you've hit the limit and you get a ``text`` event with 2K of
- data. So even if you limit your ``write`` calls to the buffer limit you've set,
- you may still get events with chunks at twice the buffer size limit you've
- specified.
-
- We may consider reinstating an equivalent functionality, provided that it
- addresses the issues above and does not cause a huge performance drop for
- use-case scenarios that don't need it.
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