Serialization

Serialization parameters define how XQuery items and XML nodes are textually output, i.e., serialized. They have been formalized in the W3C XQuery Serialization 3.0 document. In BaseX, they can be specified in several ways:

• by using the -s flag of the BaseX command-line clients,
• by setting the SERIALIZER option before running a query,
• by setting the EXPORTER option before exporting a database,
• by setting them via the Output Parameter of the JAX-RX API,
• by including them in the prolog of the XQuery expression (since XQuery 3.0), or
• by specifying them in the XQuery function file:write().

Parameters

The following table gives a brief summary of all serialization parameters supported by BaseX. For details, please refer to official specification.

Parameter	Description	Restrictions	Default	Examples
version	XML Version.	1.0,1.1	1.0	version=1.0
encoding	Encoding to be used for outputting the data.		UTF-8	encoding=US-ASCII
indent	Adjust whitespaces to make the output better readable.	yes,no	yes	indent=no
cdata-section-elements	List of elements to be output as CDATA, separated by whitespaces.			cdata-section-elements=text
omit-xml-declaration	Omits the XML declaration, which is serialized before the actual query result.	yes,no	yes	omit-xml-declaration=no
standalone	Prints or omits the "standalone" attribute in the XML declaration, which states if the document has external markup declarations.	yes,no,omit	omit	standalone=yes