As a first example, consider the following very simple XML instance data (source):

Assuming XCG.XML is in the same directory, then executing the command

will produce the following files, within the ex1 directory:

Root.hpp

Declaration of the Root, Element, and Child classes

Root.inl

Inline implementations of the simple methods of the Root, Element, and Child classes. For example, the default constructor, attribute accessor functions, etc.

Root.cpp

Implementations of all methods for the Root, Element, and Child classes that are are too complex to make inline.

The c++ code that was generated has the following features:

• Uses libxml2 for reading, writing, and validating an XML instace. If zlib and iconv are provided, libxml2 provides the abilities to translate between encodings and compress the data.
• All generated code is contained within a namespace, all lowercase, of the root element name. In this case, the namespace is "root".
• Provides classes to encapsulate each element. In this case the classes created are "Root", "Element", and "Child". Note that the class names start with capital letters. Each class has the following abilites:
  • Read or write itself to a file, in XML format
  • Read or write itself to a libxml2 document
  • Provides members for accessing element attributes
  • Provides members for accessing arrays of child elements
  • Provide members for accessing the value of the element
  • Copy constructor, and operator=
  • Failures and unexpected situations are communicated via std::runtime_error

To read an instance, just construct the root element class and pass the path to the file, like this:

If no exceptions are thrown, then the file was read and parsed correctly.

To walk the <child> elements, you can use std::for_each if you don't need to modify the child elements, or walk the list directly if you do. Here is an example of using std::for_each to dump the objects: