NAME¶
DtdToHaskell - a XML DTD to Haskell translator
SYNOPSIS¶
DtdToHaskell [
dtdfile [
outfile ]]
Missing file arguments or dashes (-) indicate standard input or output
respectively.
DESCRIPTION¶
DtdToHaskell is a tool for translating any valid XML DTD into equivalent Haskell
types. This allows you to generate, edit, and transform documents as normal
typed values in programs, and to read and write them as human-readable XML
documents. It uses the Text.XML.HaXml.XmlContent class as a framework for
printing and parsing.
DtdToHaskell reads and parses a DTD from
dtdfile (which may be
either just a DTD, or a full XML document containing an internal DTD). It
generates into
outfile a Haskell module containing a collection of type
definitions plus some class instance declarations for I/O.
In order to use the resulting module, you need to import it, and also to import
Text.XML.HaXml.XmlContent. To read and write XML files as values of the
declared types, use some of the convenience functions from XmlContent.
You will need to study the automatically-generated type declarations to write
your own code using them - but most things have pretty obvious parallels to
the DTD structure.
LIMITATIONS¶
The generated Haskell contains references to types like OneOf3 where there is a
choice between n (in this case 3) different tags. Currently, the module
Text.XML.HaXml.OneOfN defines these types up to n=20. If your DTD requires
larger choices, then use the tool
MkOneOf to generate the extra size or
range of sizes you need.
We mangle tag names and attribute names to ensure that they have the correct
lexical form in Haskell, but this means that (for instance) we can't
distinguish Myname and myname, which are different names in XML but translate
to overlapping types in Haskell (and hence probably won't compile).
Attribute names translate into named fields: but because Haskell doesn't allow
different types to have the same named field, this means your XML document
which uses the same name for similar attributes on different tags would crash
and burn. We have fixed this by incorporating the tagname into the named field
in addition to the attribute name, e.g. tagAttr instead of just attr. Uglier,
but more portable.
XML namespaces. Currently, we just mangle the namespace identifier into any tag
name which uses it. Probably the right way to do it is to regard the namespace
as a separate imported module, and hence translate the namespace prefix into a
module qualifier. Does this sound about right? (It isn't implemented yet.)
External subset. Since HaXml release 1.00, we support the XML DTD external
subset. This means we can read and parse a whole bunch of files as part of the
same DTD, and we respect INCLUDE and IGNORE conditional sections. The sub-DTD
files must be available locally - we don't go looking for them on the web.
There are some fringe parts of the DTD we are not entirely sure about, such as
Tokenised Types and Notation Types. In particular, there is no validity
checking of these external references. If you find a problem, mail us:
Malcolm.Wallace@cs.york.ac.uk
COPYRIGHT¶
- The HaXml library and tools were written by and are
copyright to
- Copyright © 1998 – 2006 Malcolm Wallace and
Colin Runciman
- The library incorporates the module
Text.ParserCombinators.HuttonMeijerWallace
- Copyright © 1996 Graham Hutton and Erik Meijer
- with modifications
- Copyright © 1998 – 2000 Malcolm Wallace
- and may also use or incorporate the module
Text.PrettyPrint.HughesPJ
- Copyright © 1996 – 1997 John Hughes and Simon
Peyton Jones
The HaXml library is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public
Licence (LGPL), with the following special exception:
As a relaxation of clause 6 of the LGPL, the copyright holders of this library
give permission to use, copy, link, modify, and distribute, binary-only
object-code versions of an executable linked with the Library, without
requiring the supply of any mechanism to modify or replace the Library and
relink (clauses 6a, 6b, 6c, 6d, 6e), provided that all the other terms of
clause 6 are complied with.
The HaXml tools Xtract, Validate, DtdToHaskell, and MkOneOf, are licensed under
the terms of the GNU General Public Licence (GPL).
This library and toolset is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Licences for more details.
SEE ALSO¶
MkOneOf(1),
Validate(1)
AUTHOR¶
This contents of this manual page was copied from the HTML documentation and
slightly edited by Arjan Oosting <arjan@debian.org> for the Debian
system (but may be used by others).
