FXML is a fork of CXML. Like CXML, it is released under the Lisp-LGPL.

You should use FXML instead of CXML if:

• You are parsing potentially ill-formed XML.
• You are parsing potentially malicious XML.
• You need to use Klacks with namespaces.

FXML’s API is very close to CXML’s, and for the most part you can refer to the CXML documentation for usage, but all package names have been changed:

CXML     -> FXML
CXML-DOM -> FXML-DOM
DOM      -> FXML.DOM
KLACKS   -> FXML.KLACKS
SAX      -> FXML.SAX
STP      -> FXML.STP

On Lisps that support package-local nicknames, an easy way to switch (if you use the package prefixes) is to shadow the CXML packages with their FXML equivalents:

(:local-nicknames (:cxml :fxml)
                  (:cxml-dom :fxml-dom)
                  (:dom :fxml.dom)
                  (:klacks :fxml.klacks)
                  (:sax :fxml.sax)
                  (:stp :fxml.stp))

However, because the package names are different, it is possible to load FXML and CXML in the same image. In fact, if you load the fxml/cxml compatibility system, you can mix SAX sources and sinks from FXML and CXML. Most usefully, you can keep any existing CXML code for querying and manipulating documents but drop in the FXML parser:

(fxml:parse #p"file.xml" (cxml-dom:make-dom-builder))

Testing

FXML’s standard of behavior is that, if security restrictions are relaxed, it should do the same thing as CXML. This is ensured with a test suite which runs both FXML and CXML against the OASIS XML test suite, and checks that they get the same results. (One exception – because FXML uses QURI, it rejects some tests with invalid URIs that CXML, using PURI, accepts.)

Differences from CXML

Bug fixes:

• Klacks handles namespaces correctly.
• XML parser does not reverse attribute lists.

Security:

• DTDs are forbidden by default.
• Entity definitions in DTDs are forbidden by default.
• External references in DTDS are forbidden by default.

New features:

• Backward compatibility with CXML (system fxml/cxml).
• Restarts allow recovery from many simple XML problems.
• Inline (callback-based) SAX handlers.
• SAX handlers that return multiple values.
• Document fragment support in STP.
• DOM and STP are (partially) compatible.
• A streaming sanitizer (system fxml/sanitize).
• Integration with cl-html5-parser (system fxml/html5).
• Integration with css-selectors (system fxml/css-selectors).

Removed features:

• FXML does not support HAX.

Implementation differences:

• FXML does not support Lisps that use UTF-16.
• Monolithic project (absorbs closure-common, cxml-stp).
• Uses named-readtables.
• Does not support SCL.
• Does not support non-Unicode Lisps.
• Uses QURI instead of PURI.

XPath

In order to use Plexippus XPath with FXML, load the fxml/xpath system:

(asdf:load-system "fxml/xpath")

This system implements the XPath protocol for both DOM and STP, so you can use XPath with all FXML documents.

DOM and STP compatibility

DOM and STP overlap significantly in some respects. In particular, read-only functions that return strings – functions that, for example, look up attribute values or tag names – are effectively equivalent. When the system fxml/stp is loaded, it specializes a number of STP methods for DOM, and a number of DOM methods for STP. (At the moment, looking at the code is the best way to see what is defined.)

Security

FXML tries to be secure by default, following the model of Python’s defusedxml library. CXML is secure by default in some respects – it does not fetch external resources unless you tell it to – but it still vulnerable to other attacks, like the billion laughs.

All of the new conditions are subtypes of fxml:xml-security-error, which is not a subtype of any other FXML error: you must handle it directly.

Three extra keyword arguments for fxml:parse:

forbid-dtd

Default false. Signal fxml:dtd-forbidden if the document contains a DTD processing declarations.

The name, pubid, and sysid can be read with fxml:dtd-name, fxml:dtd-pubid, and fxml:dtd-sysid, respectively.

You can restart with continue if you want to parse the DTD anyway.

forbid-entities

Default true. Signal fxml:entities-forbidden if the document’s DTD contains entity definitions.

The name of the entity can be read with fxml:entity-name and, in the case of an internal entity, the name can be read with fxml:entity-value.

You can restart with continue to skip the entity being defined.

forbid-external

Default true. Signal fxml:external-reference-forbidden if the document’s DTD contains external references.

(This is actually an error by default in CXML, but it doesn’t have its own condition.)

The pubid and sysid of the reference can be read with fxml:entity-reference-pubid and fxml:entity-reference-sysid.

You can restart with continue if you want to let FXML try to fetch the reference.

Restarts

For most well-formedness violations, there is one and only one reasonable way to proceed. We make this available as a continue restart.

(handler-bind ((fxml:well-formedness-violation #'continue))
  (fxml:parse ...))

This is enough to handle most practical problems with XML in the wild: leading and trailing junk, unescaped ampersands, illegal characters, and DTDs (a feature which is largely indistinguishable from a bug).

(Although I do not care much about conformance, I do not think that providing restarts can be said to be non-conforming. My invoking a restart is no different than my stopping, editing the document, and re-submitting it to the parser, except that it saves time. The fact that the XML spec was written in an era when programming language was a euphemism for Java does not mean we should have to write Java in Lisp to deal with XML.)

Undefined entities

Undefined entities are signaled as undefined-entity, a subtype of well-formedness-violation. The name of the undefined entity can be read with undefined-entity-name.

There are two restarts for undefined entities: you can omit the entity with continue, or manually supply an expansion with use-value.

Undeclared namespaces

Undeclared namespace prefixes are signaled as undeclared-namespace, a subtype of well-formedness-violation. The prefix of the namespace can be read with undeclared-namespace-prefix.

The only restart provided for undeclared-namespace is store-value: to recover, you must provide a URI for the namespace. The XML is then re-written exactly as if the element had the appropriate xmlns attribute.

SAX handlers

This fork provides two new classes of SAX handler: values-handler and callback-handler.

Callback handlers let you create SAX handlers without having to define classes. Instead of defining methods, you provide callbacks for only the events that interest you.

Values handlers are just broadcast handlers that return, as multiple values, the return value of each of their sub-handlers.

Values handlers and callback handlers can work together.

Suppose, for example, that you want to both parse an XML file, and extract all of its text. Of course you could parse the DOM and then recurse on it. But by combining callback handlers and values handlers, you can do it in one pass:

(multiple-value-bind (dom text)
    (fxml:parse document
                (fxml:make-values-handler
                 (fxml.stp:make-builder)
                 (let ((text (make-string-output-stream)))
                   (fxml.sax:make-callback-handler
                    :characters (λ (data)
                                   (write-string data text))
                    :end-document (λ ()
                                     (get-output-stream-string text))))))
  ...)