Perl Binding for libxml2

Synopsis

use XML::LibXML;
my $parser = XML::LibXML->new();

my $doc = $parser->parse_string(<<'EOT');
<some-xml/>
EOT

Description
This module is an interface to the gnome libxml2 DOM and SAX parser and the DOM tree. It also provides an XML::XPath-like findnodes() interface, providing access to the XPath API in libxml2. The module is split into several packages which are not described in this section.
For further information, please check the following documentation:
XML::LibXML::Parser 	 Parsing XML Files with XML::LibXML
XML::LibXML::DOM 	 XML::LibXML DOM Implementation
XML::LibXML::SAX 	 XML::LibXML direct SAX parser
XML::LibXML::Document 	 XML::LibXML DOM Document Class
XML::LibXML::Node 	 Abstract Base Class of XML::LibXML Nodes
XML::LibXML::Element 	 XML::LibXML Class for Element Nodes
XML::LibXML::Text 	 XML::LibXML Class for Text Nodes
XML::LibXML::Comment 	 XML::LibXML Comment Nodes
XML::LibXML::CDATASection 	 XML::LibXML Class for CDATA Sections
XML::LibXML::Attr 	 XML::LibXML Attribute Class
XML::LibXML::DocumentFragment 	 XML::LibXML's DOM L2 Document Fragment Implementation
XML::LibXML::Namespace 	 XML::LibXML Namespace Implementation
XML::LibXML::PI 	 XML::LibXML Processing Instructions
XML::LibXML::Dtd 	 XML::LibXML DTD Support
XML::LibXML::RelaxNG 	 XML::LibXML frontend for RelaxNG schema validation
XML::LibXMLguts 	 Internal of the Perl Layer for libxml2 (not done yet)

Version Information
Sometimes it is usefull to figure out, for which version XML::LibXML was compiled for. In most cases this is for debugging or to check if a given installation meets all functionality for the package. The functiones XML::LibXML::LIBXML_DOTTED_VERSION and XML::LibXML::LIBXML_VERSION provide this version information. Both functions simply pass through the values of the similar named macros of libxml2.
XML::LibXML::LIBXML_DOTTED_VERSION 	

$Version_String = XML::LibXML::LIBXML_DOTTED_VERSION;

Returns the Versionstring of the libxml2 version XML::LibXML was compiled for. This will be "2.6.2" for "libxml2 2.6.2".
XML::LibXML::LIBXML_VERSION 	

$Version_ID = XML::LibXML::LIBXML_VERSION;

Returns the version id of the libxml2 version XML::LibXML was compiled for. This will be "20602" for "libxml2 2.6.2". Don't mix this version id with $XML::LibXML::VERSION. The latter contains the version of XML::LibXML itself while the first contains the version of libxml2 XML::LibXML was compiled for.

Related Modules
The modules described in this section are not part of the XML::LibXML package itself. As they support some additional features, they are mentioned here.
XML::LibXSLT 	 XSLT Processor using libxslt and XML::LibXML
XML::LibXML::Common 	 Common functions for XML::LibXML related Classes
XML::LibXML::Iterator 	 XML::LibXML Implementation of the DOM Traversal Specification
XML::LibXML::XPathContext 	 Advanced XPath processing using libxml2 and XML::LibXML

XML::LibXML and XML::GDOME
Note: THE FUNCTIONS DESCRIBED HERE ARE STILL EXPERIMENTAL
Although both modules make use of libxml2's XML capabilities, the DOM implementation of both modules are not compatible. But still it is possible to exchange nodes from one DOM to the other. The concept of this exchange is pretty similar to the function cloneNode(): The particular node is copied on the lowlevel to the opposite DOM implementation.
Since the DOM implementations cannot coexist within one document, one is forced to copy each node that should be used. Because you are always keeping two nodes this may cause quite an impact on a machines memory usage.
XML::LibXML provides two functions to export or import GDOME nodes: import_GDOME() and export_GDOME(). Both function have two parameters: the node and a flag for recursive import. The flag works as in cloneNode().
The two functions allow to export and import XML::GDOME nodes explicitly, however, XML::LibXML allows also the transparent import of XML::GDOME nodes in functions such as appendChild(), insertAfter() and so on. While native nodes are automaticly adopted in most functions XML::GDOME nodes are always cloned in advance. Thus if the original node is modified after the operation, the node in the XML::LibXML document will not have this information.
import_GDOME 	

$libxmlnode = XML::LibXML->import_GDOME( $node, $deep );

This clones an XML::GDOME node to a XML::LibXML node explicitly.
export_GDOME 	

$gdomenode = XML::LibXML->export_GDOME( $node, $deep );

Allows to clone an XML::LibXML node into a XML::GDOME node.