XML - Processors

When a software program reads an XML document and takes actions accordingly, this is called processing the XML. Any program that can read and process XML documents is known as an XML processor. An XML processor reads the XML file and turns it into in-memory structures that the rest of the program can access.

The most fundamental XML processor reads an XML document and converts it into an internal representation for other programs or subroutines to use. This is called a parser, and it is an important component of every XML processing program.

Processor involves processing the instructions, that can be studied in the chapter Processing Instruction.

Types

XML processors are classified as validating or non-validating types, depending on whether or not they check XML documents for validity. A processor that discovers a validity error must be able to report it, but may continue with normal processing.

A few validating parsers are − xml4c (IBM, in C++), xml4j (IBM, in Java), MSXML (Microsoft, in Java), TclXML (TCL), xmlproc (Python), XML::Parser (Perl), Java Project X (Sun, in Java).

A few non-validating parsers are − OpenXML (Java), Lark (Java), xp (Java), AElfred (Java), expat (C), XParse (JavaScript), xmllib (Python).