CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c++xml
qazwsx
qazwsx

Reputation: 26868

What library to use to *write* XML file in a C++ program?

What library to use to write XML file in a C++ program?

I've found two classes posted in CodeProject

but want to check if there is more standard option than these. I'm only concerned with writing, and not parsing XML.

Upvotes: 7

Views: 11294

Answers (7)

Ferruccio
Ferruccio

Reputation: 100638

I ran into the same problem and wound up rolling my own solution. It's implemented as a single header file that you can drop into your project: xml_writer.h

And it comes with a set of unit tests which also serve as documentation.

Upvotes: 0

Remy Lebeau
Remy Lebeau

Reputation: 595295

I have been using the open-source libxml2 library for years, works great for me.

Upvotes: 0

Bob
Bob

Reputation: 1237

For my purposes, PugiXML worked out really nicely

http://pugixml.org/

The reason why I thought it was so nice was because it was simply 3 files, a configuration header, a header, and the actual source.

But as you stated, you aren't interested in parsing, so why even bother using a special class to write out XML? While maybe your classes are too complex for this, I found the easy thing to do is use the std::ostream and just write out standard compliant XML this way. For example, say I have a class that represents a Company which is a collection of Employee objects, just make a method in each the Company and Employee classes that looks something like the following psuedocode

Company::writeXML(std::ostream& out){
    out << "<company>" << std::endl;
    BOOST_FOREACH(Employee e, employees){
        e.writeXML(out);
    }
    out << "</company>" << std::endl;
}

and to make it even easier, your Employee's writeXML function can be declared virtual so that you can have a specific output for say a CEO, President, Janitor or whatever the subclasses should be.

Upvotes: 0

deft_code
deft_code

Reputation: 59269

Roll your own

I've been in a similar situation. I had a program that needed to generate JSON. We did it two ways. First we tried jsoncpp, but in the end I just generated the JSON directly via a std::ofstream.

Afterward we ran the generated JSON through a validator to catch any syntax errors. There were a few but they were really easy to find and correct.

If I were to do it again I would definitely roll my own again. Somewhat unexpectedly, there was less code when using std::ofstream. Plus we didn't have to use/learn a new API. It was easier to write and is easier to maintain.

Upvotes: -1

ocirocir
ocirocir

Reputation: 4038

You can use Xerces-C++, a library written by Apache foundation. This library permits read, write and manipulate XML files.

Link: http://xerces.apache.org/xerces-c/

Upvotes: 1

jmucchiello
jmucchiello

Reputation: 18984

Question: Are you ever going to update an XML file? Because while that sounds like it's just more writing, with XML it still requires a parser.

While xerces is large and bloated, it is fully standards compliant and it is DOM based. Should you ever have to cross platform or change language, there will always be a DOM based library for whatever language/platform you might move to so knowing how DOM based parsing/writing works is a benefit. If you are going to use XML, you may as well use it correctly.

Avoiding XML altogether is of course the best option. But short of that, I'd go with xerces.

Upvotes: 4

Eddie Paz
Eddie Paz

Reputation: 2241

I tried different libraries and finally decided for TinyXml. It's compact, fast, free (zlib license) and very easy to use.

Upvotes: 4

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