CheatyXML

CheatyXML is a Swift framework designed to manage XML easily

Programming language: Swift

License: MIT License

Tags: Data Management     XML    

Latest version: v3.0.0

README

CheatyXML

CheatyXML is a Swift framework designed to manage XML easily.

Installation

Cocoapods

If you're using cocoapods, just add pod 'CheatyXML' into your Podfile file.

Manual

To install this, simply add the .xcodeproj to your project, and do not forget to link the .framework.

Whenever you want to use it in your code, simply type :

import CheatyXML

Usage

Let's take the following XML content for all of our examples :

<blog version="1.0" creator="lobodart">
    <name>MyAwesomeBlog!</name>
    <users>
        <admin is_active="true">lobodart</admin>
        <moderator is_active="false">slash705</moderator>
        <moderator is_active="...">...</moderator>
        ...
    </users>
    <article>
        <title>My first article</title>
        <description>This is the first article</description>
        <infos>
            <date>2015-03-15 15:42:42</date>
            <rate>42</rate>
        </infos>
        ...
    </article>
    <article>
        ...
    </article>
    ...
</blog>

There are different ways to create an instance of CXMLParser.

Using an URL

let parser: CXMLParser! = CXMLParser(contentsOfURL: ...) // NSURL

Using a string

let parser: CXMLParser! = CXMLParser(string: ...) // String

Using data

let parser: CXMLParser! = CXMLParser(data: ...) // NSData

--

Retrieving an element using tags

Suppose we want to retrieve the blog name of our example :

let blogName: String! = parser["name"].stringValue // Returns a String
let blogName: String? = parser["name"].string // Returns an optional String

Note

If you want to clarify your code, you can add rootElement :

let element = parser.rootElement["name"] // is the same as the notation seen before

If you want to access to deeper elements like admin, just chain :

let blogAdmin: String! = parser["users"]["admin"].stringValue
print(blogAdmin) // lobodart

--

Working with multiple elements

Now let's take a look at the article element. We can see that our blog contains a few articles.

Get an element using its index

If we want to get the title of the first article, we can do it like this :

let firstArticleTitle: String! = parser["article", 0]["title"].stringValue
let firstArticleTitle: String! = parser["article"][0]["title"].stringValue

Both notations have the same effect. Choose the one you like most.

Browse children of an element

To iterate over all children of an element, just use the for in classic syntax :

for element in parser.rootElement {
    print(element.tagName)
}

This code will give us :

name
users
article
article
...

Now, to iterate over specific children of an element, the code is almost the same :

for element in parser.rootElement.elementsNamed("article") {
    print(element.tagName)
}

This time, it will give us :

article
article
...

Of course, you can use this method on any deeper elements (like users for example).

Number of children of an element

If you want to get the total number of children contained in an element, you can use this code :

// Suppose we have 3 moderators in our example
let numberOfElements: Int = parser["users"].numberOfChildElements
print(numberOfElements) // 4 (3 moderators + 1 admin)

Note that this code counts all child elements contained in users. Now suppose we want to get the number of moderators only. There are 2 different syntaxes. Once again, choose your favorite one :

let numberOfElements: Int = parser["users"]["moderator"].count
let numberOfElements: Int = parser["users"].elementsNamed("moderator").count

--

Type casting (>= 2.0.0)

CheatyXML allows you to cast tag/attribute values into some common types. You can get either optional or non-optional value for your cast.

let firstArticleRate = parser["article", 0]["rate"]
firstArticleRate.int // Optional(42)
firstArticleRate.intValue // 42
firstArticleRate.float // Optional(42.0)
firstArticleRate.floatValue // 42.0

If you are not sure about the type, use the optional caster. If you try to cast a value with an inappropriate caster, your app will crash.

let firstArticleTitle = parser["article", 0]["title"]
firstArticleTitle.string // Optional("My first article")
firstArticleTitle.stringValue // "My first article"
firstArticleTitle.int // nil
firstArticleTitle.intValue // CRASH!

--

Missing tags

Until now, we always retrieved existing tags but what would happen if a tag doesn't exist ? Fortunately for us, CheatyXML can handle this case. Let's take an example :

let articleDate: String! = parser["article", 0]["infos"]["date"].stringValue
print(articleDate) // 2015-03-15 15:42:42
let articleDateFail: String! = parser["articles", 0]["infos"]["date"].string // I intentionally add an 's' to 'article'
print(articleDateFail) // nil

Note

If you have any doubt, keep in mind that using .string is safer than using .stringValue. In the previous example, using .stringValue on articleDateFail will result in your application to crash.

In sum, you can make mistakes without worrying about your application crash as long as you don't use .stringValue.

--

Attributes

Get one

With CheatyXML, getting any attribute is very simple.

>= 2.0.0

let blogVersion = parser.rootElement.attribute("version")
let adminIsActive = parser["users"]["admin"].attribute("is_active")

Earlier

let blogVersion = parser.rootElement.attributes["version"]
let adminIsActive = parser["users"]["admin"].attributes["is_active"]

As mentionned above, if you are using a version >= 2.0.0, you can also use the type casting on attributes.

let blogVersion = parser.rootElement.attribute("version").floatValue // 1.0
let creator = parser.rootElement.attribute("creator").stringValue // "lobodart"

Note

For more information about the optional/non-optional casting, please read the Type casting part.

Get all

Once uppon a time, it is very easy to get all the tag attributes.

>= 2.0.0

let attributes = parser.rootElement.attributes // Will give you a [CXMLAttribute]
let dic = attributes.dictionary // Will give you a [String: String]

Earlier

let attributes = parser.rootElement.attributes // Will give you a [String: String]

TO-DO

• [ ] Add more Unit Tests
• [ ] Class mapping
• [ ] XML Generator