LuaExpat
XML Expat parsing for the Lua programming language

## Introduction

Lua Object Model (LOM) is a representation of XML elements through Lua data types. Currently it is not supposed to be 100% complete, but simple.

LuaExpat's distribution provides an implementation of LOM that gets an XML documenta (a string) and transforms it to a Lua table. The only function exported is `lxp.lom.parse`.

## Characteristics

The model represents each XML element as a Lua table. A LOM table has three special characteristics:

- a special field called `tag` that holds the element's name;
- an optional field called `attr` that stores the element's attributes (see attribute's section); and
- the element's children are stored at the array-part of the table. A child could be an ordinary string or another XML element that will be represented by a Lua table following these same rules.

### Attributes

The special field `attr` is a Lua table that stores the XML element's attributes as pairs <key>=<value>. To assure an order (if necessary), the sequence of keys could be placed at the array-part of this same table.

## Examples

For a simple string like

        s = [[<abc a1="A1" a2="A2">inside tag `abc'</abc>]]

A call like

        tab = lxp.lom.parse (s))

Would result in a table equivalent to

    tab = {
            ["attr"] = {
                    [1] = "a1",
                    [2] = "a2",
                    ["a2"] = "A2",
                    ["a1"] = "A1",
            },
            [1] = "inside tag `abc'",
            ["tag"] = "abc",
    }

Now an example with an element nested inside another element

    tab = lxp.lom.parse(
    [[<qwerty q1="q1" q2="q2">
        <asdf>some text</asdf>
    </qwerty>]]
    )

The result would have been a table equivalent to

    tab = {
            [1] = "\
            ",
            [2] = {
                    ["attr"] = {
                    },
                    [1] = "some text",
                    ["tag"] = "asdf",
            },
            ["attr"] = {
                    [1] = "q1",
                    [2] = "q2",
                    ["q2"] = "q2",
                    ["q1"] = "q1",
            },
            [3] = "\
    ",
            ["tag"] = "qwerty",
    }

Note that even the new-line and tab characters are stored on the table.

$Id: lom.html,v 1.6 2006/03/20 22:26:00 carregal Exp $