Ox gem

Optimized XML (Ox), as the name implies was written to provide speed optimized XML and now HTML handling. It was designed to be an alternative to Nokogiri and other Ruby XML parsers in generic XML parsing and as an alternative to Marshal for Object serialization.

Unlike some other Ruby XML parsers, Ox is self contained. Ox uses nothing other than standard C libraries so version issues with libXml are not an issue.

Marshal uses a binary format for serializing Objects. That binary format changes with releases making Marshal dumped Object incompatible between some versions. The use of a binary format make debugging message streams or file contents next to impossible unless the same version of Ruby and only Ruby is used for inspecting the serialize Object. Ox on the other hand uses human readable XML. Ox also includes options that allow strict, tolerant, or a mode that automatically defines missing classes.

It is possible to write an XML serialization gem with Nokogiri or other XML parsers but writing such a package in Ruby results in a module significantly slower than Marshal. This is what triggered the start of Ox development.

Ox handles XML documents in three ways. It is a generic XML parser and writer, a fast Object / XML marshaller, and a stream SAX parser. Ox was written for speed as a replacement for Nokogiri, Ruby LibXML, and for Marshal.

As an XML parser it is 2 or more times faster than Nokogiri and as a generic XML writer it is as much as 20 times faster than Nokogiri. Of course different files may result in slightly different times.

As an Object serializer Ox is up to 6 times faster than the standard Ruby Marshal.dump() and up to 3 times faster than Marshal.load().

The SAX like stream parser is 40 times faster than Nokogiri and more than 13 times faster than LibXML when validating a file with minimal Ruby callbacks. Unlike Nokogiri and LibXML, Ox can be tuned to use only the SAX callbacks that are of interest to the caller. (See the perf_sax.rb file for an example.)

Ox is compatible with Ruby 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, 2.6, 2.7, 3.0.

Object Dump Sample:

require 'ox'

class Sample
  attr_accessor :a, :b, :c

  def initialize(a, b, c)
    @a = a
    @b = b
    @c = c
  end
end

# Create Object
obj = Sample.new(1, "bee", ['x', :y, 7.0])
# Now dump the Object to an XML String.
xml = Ox.dump(obj)
# Convert the object back into a Sample Object.
obj2 = Ox.parse_obj(xml)

Generic XML Writing and Parsing:

require 'ox'

doc = Ox::Document.new

instruct = Ox::Instruct.new(:xml)
instruct[:version] = '1.0'
instruct[:encoding] = 'UTF-8'
instruct[:standalone] = 'yes'
doc << instruct

top = Ox::Element.new('top')
top[:name] = 'sample'
doc << top

mid = Ox::Element.new('middle')
mid[:name] = 'second'
top << mid

bot = Ox::Element.new('bottom')
bot[:name] = 'third'
bot << 'text at bottom'
mid << bot

other_elements = Ox::Element.new('otherElements')
other_elements << Ox::CData.new('<sender>John Smith</sender>')
other_elements << Ox::Comment.new('Director\'s commentary')
# other_elements << Ox::DocType.new('content')
other_elements << Ox::Raw.new('<warning>Be carefull with this! Direct inject into XML!</warning>')
top << other_elements


xml = Ox.dump(doc)

# xml =
# <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
# <top name="sample">
#   <middle name="second">
#     <bottom name="third">text at bottom</bottom>
#   </middle>
#   <otherElements>
#     <![CDATA[<sender>John Smith</sender>]]>
#     <!-- Director's commentary -->
#     <warning>Be carefull with this! Direct inject into XML!</warning>
#   </otherElements>
# </top>

HTML Parsing:

Ox can be used to parse HTML with a few options changes. HTML is often loose in regard to conformance. For HTML parsing try these options.

Ox.default_options = {
    mode:   :generic,
    effort: :tolerant,
    smart:  true
}

SAX XML Parsing:

require 'stringio'
require 'ox'

class Sample < ::Ox::Sax
  def start_element(name); puts "start: #{name}";        end
  def end_element(name);   puts "end: #{name}";          end
  def attr(name, value);   puts "  #{name} => #{value}"; end
  def text(value);         puts "text #{value}";         end
end

io = StringIO.new(%{
<top name="sample">
  <middle name="second">
    <bottom name="third"/>
  </middle>
</top>
})

handler = Sample.new()
Ox.sax_parse(handler, io)
# outputs
# start: top
#   name => sample
# start: middle
#   name => second
# start: bottom
#   name => third
# end: bottom
# end: middle
# end: top

Yielding results immediately while SAX XML Parsing:

require 'stringio'
require 'ox'

class Yielder < ::Ox::Sax
  def initialize(block); @yield_to = block; end
  def start_element(name); @yield_to.call(name); end
end

io = StringIO.new(%{
<top name="sample">
  <middle name="second">
    <bottom name="third"/>
  </middle>
</top>
})

proc = Proc.new { |name| puts name }
handler = Yielder.new(proc)
puts "before parse"
Ox.sax_parse(handler, io)
puts "after parse"
# outputs
# before parse
# top
# middle
# bottom
# after parse

Parsing XML into a Hash (fast)

require 'ox'

xml = %{
<top name="sample">
  <middle name="second">
    <bottom name="third">Rock bottom</bottom>
  </middle>
</top>
}

puts Ox.load(xml, mode: :hash)
puts Ox.load(xml, mode: :hash_no_attrs)

#{:top=>[{:name=>"sample"}, {:middle=>[{:name=>"second"}, {:bottom=>[{:name=>"third"}, "Rock bottom"]}]}]}
#{:top=>{:middle=>{:bottom=>"Rock bottom"}}}

Object XML format

The XML format used for Object encoding follows the structure of the Object. Each XML element is encoded so that the XML element name is a type indicator. Attributes of the element provide additional information such as the Class if relevant, the Object attribute name, and Object ID if necessary.

The type indicator map is:

a => Array
b => Base64 - only for legacy loads
c => Class
f => Float
g => Regexp
h => Hash
i => Fixnum
j => Bignum
l => Rational
m => Symbol
n => FalseClass
o => Object
p => Ref
r => Range
s => String
t => Time
u => Struct
v => Complex
x => Raw
y => TrueClass
z => NilClass

If the type is an Object, type 'o' then an attribute named 'c' should be set with the full Class name including the Module names. If the XML element represents an Object then a sub-elements is included for each attribute of the Object. An XML element attribute 'a' is set with a value that is the name of the Ruby Object attribute. In all cases, except for the Exception attribute hack the attribute names begin with an @ character. (Exception are strange in that the attributes of the Exception Class are not named with a @ suffix. A hack since it has to be done in C and can not be done through the interpreter.)

Values are encoded as the text portion of an element or in the sub-elements of the principle. For example, a Fixnum is encoded as:

<i>123</i>

An Array has sub-elements and is encoded similar to this example.

<a>
  <i>1</i>
  <s>abc</s>
</a>

A Hash is encoded with an even number of elements where the first element is the key and the second is the value. This is repeated for each entry in the Hash. An example is of { 1 => 'one', 2 => 'two' } encoding is:

<h>
  <i>1</i>
  <s>one</s>
  <i>2</i>
  <s>two</s>
</h>

Ox supports circular references where attributes of one Object can refer to an Object that refers back to the first Object. When this option is used an Object ID is added to each XML Object element as the value of the 'a' attribute.