An XML package for the S language

Last Release: 3.98-1 (Sun Oct 4 17:00:33 PDT 2015)

This package provides facilities for the S language to

• parse XML files, URLs and strings, using either the DOM (Document Object Model)/tree-based approach, or the event-driven SAX (Simple API for XML) mechanism;
• parse HTML documents,
• perform XPath queries on a document,
• generate XML content to buffers, files, URLs, and internal XML trees;
• read DTDs as S objects.

Download

The source for the S package can be downloaded as XML_3.98-1.tar.gz.

There is also a Windows version available from the Omegahat repository. Use

install.packages("XML", repos = "http://www.omegahat.org/R")

Documentation

Best practices for using the XML package

PDF version.

A short overview: HTML, PDF

A brief introduction to parsing XML in R: HTML, PDF

A reasonably detailed overview of the package and what we might use XML for.

A manual in and a quick guide to the package (PDF).

A short overview of the package.

Brief and incomplete Notes on generating XML within S

FAQ for the package.

Changes to the packages (by release).

Examples of Reading Generic XML files

XML form of plist (property list) files (e.g. property lists on OS X, old iTunes databases)

keyValueDB.R

library(XML)
source(url("http://www.omegahat.org/RSXML/keyValueDB.R"))
o = readKeyValueDB("http://www.omegahat.org/RSXML/plist.xml")      

XML "solr" files that are similar to JSON and name-value pairs with nodes of the form

<lst name="info">
      <str name="ABC">A string</str>
      <int name="xyz">103</int>
      <long name="big">1000012310303</long>
      <bool>true</bool>
      <date name="lastModified">2011-02-10T11:29:03Z</date>
</lst>

solrDocs.R

library(XML)
source(url("http://www.omegahat.org/RSXML/solrDocs.R"))
o = readSolrDoc("http://www.omegahat.org/RSXML/solr.xml")