phpman > perldoc > XML::LibXML::Common(3pm)

NAME
    XML::LibXML::Common - Constants and Character Encoding Routines

SYNOPSIS
      use XML::LibXML::Common;

      $encodedstring = encodeToUTF8( $name_of_encoding, $sting_to_encode );
      $decodedstring = decodeFromUTF8($name_of_encoding, $string_to_decode );

DESCRIPTION
    XML::LibXML::Common defines constants for all node types and provides interface to libxml2
    charset conversion functions.

    Since XML::LibXML use their own node type definitions, one may want to use XML::LibXML::Common
    in its compatibility mode:

  Exporter TAGS
      use XML::LibXML::Common qw(:libxml);

    ":libxml" tag will use the XML::LibXML Compatibility mode, which defines the old 'XML_'
    node-type definitions.

      use XML::LibXML::Common qw(:gdome);

    ":gdome" tag will use the XML::GDOME Compatibility mode, which defines the old 'GDOME_'
    node-type definitions.

      use XML::LibXML::Common qw(:w3c);

    This uses the nodetype definition names as specified for DOM.

      use XML::LibXML::Common qw(:encoding);

    This tag can be used to export only the charset encoding functions of XML::LibXML::Common.

  Exports
    By default the W3 definitions as defined in the DOM specifications and the encoding functions
    are exported by XML::LibXML::Common.

  Encoding functions
    To encode or decode a string to or from UTF-8, XML::LibXML::Common exports two functions, which
    provide an interface to the encoding support in "libxml2". Which encodings are supported by
    these functions depends on how "libxml2" was compiled. UTF-16 is always supported and on most
    installations, ISO encodings are supported as well.

    This interface was useful for older versions of Perl. Since Perl >= 5.8 provides similar
    functions via the "Encode" module, it is probably a good idea to use those instead.

    encodeToUTF8
          $encodedstring = encodeToUTF8( $name_of_encoding, $sting_to_encode );

        The function will convert a byte string from the specified encoding to an UTF-8 encoded
        character string.

    decodeToUTF8
          $decodedstring = decodeFromUTF8($name_of_encoding, $string_to_decode );

        This function converts an UTF-8 encoded character string to a specified encoding. Note that
        the conversion can raise an error if the given string contains characters that cannot be
        represented in the target encoding.

    Both these functions report their errors on the standard error. If an error occurs the function
    will croak(). To catch the error information it is required to call the encoding function from
    within an eval block in order to prevent the entire script from being stopped on encoding error.

  A note on history
    Before XML::LibXML 1.70, this class was available as a separate CPAN distribution, intended to
    provide functionality shared between XML::LibXML, XML::GDOME, and possibly other modules. Since
    there seems to be no progress in this direction, we decided to merge XML::LibXML::Common 0.13
    and XML::LibXML 1.70 to one CPAN distribution.

    The merge also naturally eliminates a practical and urgent problem experienced by many
    XML::LibXML users on certain platforms, namely mysterious misbehavior of XML::LibXML occurring
    if the installed (often pre-packaged) version of XML::LibXML::Common was compiled against an
    older version of libxml2 than XML::LibXML.

AUTHORS
    Matt Sergeant, Christian Glahn, Petr Pajas

VERSION
    2.0134

COPYRIGHT
    2001-2007, AxKit.com Ltd.

    2002-2006, Christian Glahn.

    2006-2009, Petr Pajas.

LICENSE
    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as
    Perl itself.