Getting Started with zenXML — Lightweight XML for Developers### Introduction
zenXML is a minimalist XML library designed for developers who need fast, memory-efficient, and easy-to-use XML parsing and serialization without the overhead of full-featured XML frameworks. It focuses on common developer needs: parsing small-to-medium XML documents, validating structure where necessary, and converting between XML and native data structures with minimal configuration.
This guide covers installation, core concepts, common workflows (parsing, building, querying, and serializing), validation strategies, performance tips, and examples showing how zenXML compares with heavier XML libraries.
Why choose zenXML?
- Lightweight and fast: Minimal abstractions reduce memory and CPU usage.
- Simple API: Few core primitives make it easy to learn and use.
- Flexible: Works well for configuration files, data interchange, small web services, and CLI tools.
- Portable: Designed to integrate into diverse environments, from server-side apps to embedded systems.
Core concepts
- Document: The whole XML document, optionally with a declaration and root element.
- Element: A node with a tag name, attributes, child nodes, and text content.
- Attribute: Key-value pairs attached to Elements.
- Node types: Element, Text, Comment, CDATA, Processing Instruction.
- Cursor/Stream parsing: zenXML supports both DOM-like parsing (building an in-memory tree) and streaming (cursor) parsing for large documents.
Installation
(Examples assume a package manager; adapt commands to your environment.)
- npm:
npm install zenxml - pip:
pip install zenxml - Composer:
composer require zenxml/zenxml
Quick start — parsing and reading
DOM-style parsing example (JavaScript-like pseudocode):
const { parse } = require('zenxml'); const xml = ` <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <config> <server host="localhost" port="8080"/> <features> <feature enabled="true">logging</feature> <feature enabled="false">metrics</feature> </features> </config> `; const doc = parse(xml); const server = doc.root.find('server'); console.log(server.attr('host')); // "localhost" console.log(server.attr('port')); // "8080" Streaming (cursor) parsing for large files:
const { stream } = require('zenxml'); const fs = require('fs'); const xmlStream = fs.createReadStream('large.xml'); const cursor = stream(xmlStream); for await (const event of cursor) { if (event.type === 'startElement' && event.name === 'item') { // process item element without loading entire document } } Building and serializing XML
Create elements programmatically and serialize:
const { Element, serialize } = require('zenxml'); const settings = new Element('settings'); settings.addChild(new Element('theme').text('dark')); settings.addChild(new Element('autosave').attr('interval', '10')); const xmlOut = serialize(settings, { declaration: true }); console.log(xmlOut); Output:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <settings> <theme>dark</theme> <autosave interval="10"/> </settings> Querying and manipulating
zenXML provides concise methods for traversal and modification:
- find(name): first matching child element
- findAll(name): all matching child elements
- attr(key): get/set attribute
- text(): get/set text content
- remove(): remove node from parent
Example — toggle a feature:
const features = doc.root.find('features'); const metrics = features.findAll('feature').find(f => f.text() === 'metrics'); metrics.attr('enabled', 'true'); // enable metrics Validation strategies
zenXML intentionally keeps validation lightweight. Options:
- Schema-light validation: Provide a small declarative schema (JSON-like) to check required elements, allowed attributes, and simple types.
- XSD support (optional module): Use the XSD module when strict validation is required, but be aware of increased size and runtime costs.
- Custom validators: Write functions that traverse the DOM or stream events to enforce complex rules.
Example declarative schema:
const schema = { root: 'config', elements: { server: { attrs: { host: 'string', port: 'number' }, required: true }, features: { children: ['feature'] }, feature: { attrs: { enabled: 'boolean' } } } }; const errors = validate(doc, schema); if (errors.length) console.error('Validation failed', errors); Performance tips
- Use streaming (cursor) parsing for files > ~10MB to avoid high memory use.
- Prefer attributes for small pieces of metadata; text nodes are better for larger content.
- Reuse parser instances where the library supports it to reduce allocation churn.
- When serializing large documents, write to streams rather than building huge strings.
Comparing zenXML to heavier libraries
| Feature | zenXML | Full-featured XML Library |
|---|---|---|
| Binary size | Small | Large |
| Memory usage | Low | Higher |
| Streaming support | ✅ | ✅ |
| XSD validation | Optional | Built-in |
| XPath/XSLT | Minimal/optional | Full support |
| Learning curve | Low | Higher |
Common use cases and examples
- Configuration files for CLI tools and apps.
- Lightweight XML APIs for microservices.
- Data interchange where JSON isn’t suitable.
- Embedded systems where resources are constrained.
Example: reading a configuration file
const config = parse(fs.readFileSync('app.config.xml', 'utf8')); const host = config.root.find('server').attr('host') || '127.0.0.1'; const port = Number(config.root.find('server').attr('port') || 3000); Debugging tips
- Pretty-print parsed trees to inspect structure.
- Use strict parsing mode to catch malformed XML early.
- Log stream events (startElement, endElement, text) for streaming parsing issues.
Extending zenXML
- Plugins: add transformers for custom node types or attribute coercion.
- Middleware: attach processors to stream events to implement cross-cutting concerns (e.g., logging, metrics).
- Integrations: converters to/from JSON, YAML, and popular frameworks’ config formats.
Conclusion
zenXML aims to give developers a fast, simple, and portable way to work with XML when the full feature set of heavyweight XML libraries is unnecessary. Use DOM-style parsing for small documents, streaming for large ones, and lightweight validation or optional XSD support when strictness is needed.
For hands-on projects, start by replacing heavy XML parsing code paths with zenXML’s streaming parser and measure memory and CPU improvements; you’ll often see immediate benefits in resource-constrained environments.
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