Add Instruction Node

Every valid XML must contain processing instruction. XML is widely used for HTML, SVG, XLS etc. So make sure your XML file has valid instruction of its type and encoding. The following line is a sample XML processing instruction.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

Skip Instruction Node While Reading XML

I don’t know how you read XML nodes and values. Most examples out there use parent and child counts. Obviously, DOM processing instruction is a node. Let’s refer the following XML file.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<properties>
 <node type="user">minhaz</node>
 <node type="os">linux</node>
 <node type="version">3.2.0-37</node>
</properties>

A valid XML must start with a root element. Here properties is a root element. It has 3 child nodes. Each node has node value and attribute. So how do we parse the whole XML? If we refer the whole document as a node, then the first line, processing instruction, will be regarded as a node. So properties will be the 2nd child node, but technically, it is the first/root node. So instead of using document.childNodes().at(1) method, we could use document.namedItem(“properties”) to get list of all child nodes under properties tag. Here is a sample code.

QDomDocument document;
document.setContent(xmlString);
QDomNode root = document.namedItem("properties");
QDomNodeList nodes = root.childNodes();

for(int i=0;i<nodes.count();i++)
{
    qDebug() << "Type: " << nodes.at(i).toElement().attribute("type")
	      << " Value: " << nodes.at(i).toElement().text();
}

And this will result into the following output.

Type:  "user"  Value:  "minhaz" 
Type:  "os"  Value:  "linux" 
Type:  "version"  Value:  "3.2.0-37"

Any more confusion? Or a better method? Let me know.

Create XML and Write into File

Parsing XML is easy. The structure is already preset there. Just detect the hierarchy and parse. But what about creating your own? Perhaps from an user defined directory tree? I went into this painful issue, and then found the correct solution.

What if we try to generate an XML from the previous text output. Assume that we have two string lists.

QStringList attributeValues = QStringList() << "user" << "os" << "version";
QStringList nodeValues = QStringList() << "minhaz" << "linux" << "3.2.0-37";

We need to create an XML using these strings, and with a processing instruction. Lets get started.

First, create a DOM document. (Don’t blame me unless you added qt += xml to your project file) Then declare a QDomDocument object.

QDomDocument document;

Now create a QDomProcessingInstruction object with correct encoding and XML version. Then add it as child node of document.

QDomProcessingInstruction header = document.createProcessingInstruction("xml", "version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"");
document.appendChild(header);

Now move to root node with tagname properties. Create a QDomElement object and append it to root.

QDomElement root = document.createElement("properties");
document.appendChild(root);

Then we will add child nodes under properties tag. Most people might think that the following line would add child nodes under root.

QDomNode child;
root.appendChild(child);

NO! That is wrong. You must create every node or elements using the reference of document. Just keep in mind that there might be more than one documents in codes. So you should not mess with parents and childs. The following lines will generate child nodes under properties tag.

QDomElement node = document.createElement("node");
root.appendChild(node);

Did you spot the difference? You have to use document.createElement, not root.appendChild method. As we have a list of strings, so we can use a loop to create all nodes and set values to them.

for(int i=0;i<attributeValues.size();i++)
{
    QDomElement node = document.createElement("node");
    node.setAttribute("type",attributeValues.at(i));
    root.appendChild(node);

    QDomText value = document.createTextNode(nodeValues.at(i));
    node.appendChild(value);
}

The code looks pretty clear. Create an element, set its attribute and append it to root. The 2nd block is used to set the value of that node.

To write the XML into file, open a QFile object, open it and flush the document onto it.

QFile xml("new-xml-file.xml");
xml.open(QIODevice::WriteOnly);
xml.write(document.toByteArray());
xml.close();

Here is the output.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<properties>
 <node type="user">minhaz</node>
 <node type="os">linux</node>
 <node type="version">3.2.0-37</node>
</properties>

That is enough for basic XML r/w actions. If you want to learn more or go deeper, run Qt Assistant. They have really awesome and detailed documents out there.

Some words about Qt DOM Node, Element and Attribut