Best (and easiest) cross platform xml library?

Hello everyone,


looking for an advice.

Best easy to use xml library for c/c++ suitable for OS4 too?
The xml library should be suitable for mingw and compatible with AmigaOS too.


I tried libxml2, but it's a pain to make it work on mingw.

@AmigaBlitter

It depends on what you need. Expat is fast and available for OS4 in all forms (shared Amiga library, static lib, shared object) but it only provides an event-driven parser for which you need to write your own callback functions to handle the individual types of XML event. Plus, if you need a library that builds a DOM-tree representation of your XML file, which you can then manipulate, Expat will not help you.

In such a case you pretty much only have two options: libxml2 and libroxml (which you'll have to port yourself but last time I tried the porting was easy). libxml2 is much more heavyweight and memory-hungry but it's a cross-platform standard that has received a lot of testing and feedback over the years. Further, if you also need XSLT support then libxml2 is a natural choice because it twins with libxslt (developed by the same person). The latest version of libxml2 (2.9.7) has already been ported by MickJT and libxslt is in the pipeline (hasn't made it to OS4depot yet).

Hope this helps.

@trixie

Thank you.

Very usefull info.

Speed is not a requirement, but eventually i need to manipulate xml.

@AmigaBlitter

If I were to develop my own project which requires manipulating XML files (i.e. retrieving data from the tree structure at any given time), and I didn't need the following features

- DTD or XML Schema validation
- XSLT support

then I'd probably give libroxml a try, mainly to make my program more "Amiga" and avoid unnecessary overhead (libroxml is targeted at embedded systems, so it's waaaaay leaner than libxml2).

On the other hand, libxml2 is a real cross-platform standard and is certainly more used and tested, so you'll have to decide where your priorities are.

@trixie

Thank you for the informations.

Tried libxml2 under mingw, but it crashes as soon an libxml2-2.dll is accessed.

Going to try libroxml.

@AmigaBlitter

Quote:
PM me if you need an OS4 build. I've just ported the latest public version (also fixing a few warnings that the original code produced when compiled with the -Wwrite-strings flag).