Parsers

This article is part of the Getting Started Section. It presents different parsers for importing various data source into BaseX databases. For export see Serialization.

XML Parsers

BaseX provides two parsers to import XML data:

• By default, the internal, built-in XML parser is used, which is more fault-tolerant than Java’s XML parser. It supports standard HTML entities out-of-the-box, and is faster in most cases. In turn, it does not support all oddities specified by DTDs, and cannot resolve catalogs.
• Java’s SAXParser can also be selected for parsing XML documents. This parser is stricter than the built-in parser, but it refuses to process some large documents.

GUI

Go to Menu Database → New, then choose the Parsing tab and (de)activate Use internal XML parser. The parsing of DTDs can be turned on/off by selecting the checkbox below.

Command Line

To turn the internal XML parser and DTD parsing on/off, modfify the INTPARSE and DTD options:

 SET INTPARSE true
 SET DTD true

XQuery

The db:add() or db:replace() function can be used as well to add new XML documents to the database. The following example query uses the internal parser and adds all files to the database DB that are found in the directory 2Bimported:

declare option db:intparse "yes";
for $file in file:list("2Bimported")
return db:add('DB', $file)

HTML Parsers

With TagSoup, HTML can be imported in BaseX without any problems. TagSoup ensures that only well-formed HTML arrives at the XML parser (correct opening and closing tags, etc.). Hence, if TagSoup is not available on a system, there will be a lot of cases where importing HTML fails, no matter whether you use the GUI or the standalone mode.

Installation

If the TagSoup classes are accessible via the classpath, or if you run BaseX from the sources and use the Maven build manager, BaseX will automatically use TagSoup to prepare HTML input. TagSoup is also included in the complete BaseX distributions (BaseX.zip, BaseX.exe, etc.) or can be manually downloaded and embedded on the appropriate platforms. Using Debian, TagSoup will be automatically included after it has been installed via:

 apt-get install libtagsoup-java

GUI

Go to Menu Database → New and select "HTML" in the input format combo box. There's an info in the "Parsing" tab about whether TagSoup is available or not.

The same applied to the "Resources" tab in the "Database Properties" dialog.

Command Line

Turn on the HTML Parser before parsing documents, and set a file filter:

 SET PARSER html
 SET CREATEFILTER *.html

XQuery

declare option db:parser "html";
doc("index.html")

TagSoup Options

TagSoup offers a variety of options to customize the import of HTML. For the complete list please visit the TagSoup website. BaseX supports most of this options in general with a few exceptions:

• encoding: BaseX tries to guess the input encoding but this can be overwritten by the user if necessary.
• files: Not supported as input documents are piped directly to the XML parser.
• method: Set to 'xml' as default. If this is set to 'html' for instance ending tags may be missing f.i.
• version: Dismissed, as TagSoup always falls back to 'version 1.0', no matter what the input is.
• standalone: Deactivated.
• pyx: Not supported as the XML parser can't handle this kind of input.
• pyxin: See pyx option.
• reuse: Not supported.
• output-encoding: Not supported, BaseX already takes care of that.
• help: Not supported.
• version: Not supported.

These options can be changed like any other option in BaseX, for example via XQuery:

declare option db:parser "html";
declare option db:htmlopt "html=false";
doc("index.html")

And also via the SET command, i.e.

 SET HTMLOPT method=xml

JSON Parser

BaseX can also import JSON documents:

GUI

Go to Menu Database → New and select "JSON" in the input format combo box. You can set the following options for parsing JSON documents in the "Parsing" tab:

• Encoding: Choose the appropriate encoding of the JSON file.
• JsonML: Activate this option if the incoming file is a JsonML file.

Command Line

Turn on the JSON Parser before parsing documents, and set some optional, parser-specific options and a file filter:

 SET PARSER json
 SET PARSEROPT encoding=utf-8, jsonml=true
 SET CREATEFILTER *.json

CSV Parser

BaseX can be used to import CSV documents. Different alternatives how to proceed are shown in the following:

GUI

Go to Menu Database → New and select "CSV" in the input format combo box. You can set the following options for parsing CSV documents in the "Parsing" tab:

• Encoding: Choose the appropriate encoding of the CSV file.
• Separator: Choose the column separator of the CSV file (possible: comma, semicolon, tab).
• XML format: Choose the XML format (possible: verbose, simple).
• Header: Activate this option if the incoming CSV files have a header line.

Command Line

Turn on the CSV Parser before parsing documents, and set some optional, parser-specific options and a file filter:

 SET PARSER csv
 SET PARSEROPT encoding=utf-8, lines=true, format=verbose, header=false, separator=comma
 SET CREATEFILTER *.csv

XQuery

The CSV parser can also be specified in the prolog of an XQuery expression. The db:add() or db:replace() function can be used to add the specified source files into the database. The following example query adds all CSV files to the database DB that are found in the directory 2Bimported, and interprets the first lines as column headers:

declare option db:parser "csv";
declare option db:parseropt "header=yes";
for $file in file:list("2Bimported", false(), "*.csv")
return db:add('DB', $file)

Text Parser

Plain text can be imported as well:

GUI

Go to Menu Database → New and select "TEXT" in the input format combobox. You can set the following option for parsing text documents in the "Parsing" tab:

• Encoding: Choose the appropriate encoding of the text file.
• Lines: Activate this option to create a <line>...</line> element for each line of the input text file.

Command Line

Turn on the CSV Parser before parsing documents and set some optional, parser-specific options and a file filter:

 SET PARSER text
 SET PARSEROPT lines=yes
 SET CREATEFILTER *

XQuery

Again, the text parser can also be specified in the prolog of an XQuery expression, and the db:add() or db:replace() function can be used to add the specified source files into the database. The following example query adds all text files to the database DB that are found in the directory 2Bimported and its sub-directories:

declare option db:parser "text";
for $file in file:list("2Bimported", true(), "*.txt")
return db:add('DB', $file)