Working with XML

Swift:
Working with XML

How to:

Swift provides XMLParser and XMLDocument for parsing XML data. Here’s a snippet to parse a simple XML string:

import Foundation

let xmlString = """
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<note>
    <to>Tove</to>
    <from>Jani</from>
    <heading>Reminder</heading>
    <body>Don't forget the party on Friday!</body>
</note>
"""

if let xmlData = xmlString.data(using: .utf8) {
    let parser = XMLParser(data: xmlData)
    parser.delegate = someParserDelegate // Your XMLParserDelegate
    parser.parse()
}

You can also generate XML using XMLDocument:

import Foundation

let note = XMLElement(name: "note")
let to = XMLElement(name: "to", stringValue: "Tove")
note.addChild(to)
let xmlDoc = XMLDocument(rootElement: note)

print(xmlDoc.xmlString(options: .nodePrettyPrint))

Sample output:

<note>
  <to>Tove</to>
</note>

Deep Dive

XML, or Extensible Markup Language, has been around since the late ’90s. It’s verbose but human-readable, making it a good fit for complex data structures. Swift’s XML parsing capabilities aren’t as robust as those found in Python’s ElementTree or Java’s JAXB, but they get the job done for basic needs.

Alternatives like JSON are often preferred in new systems due to their lighter weight and less complex parsers, but XML is still prominent in many enterprise and legacy systems.

When working with XML in Swift, XMLParser is a stream-based parser which means it reads through the XML document sequentially. For large XML files, this is memory-efficient. However, if you’re looking for simplicity and your XML data is reasonably small, using XMLDocument might be more straightforward.

Swift:Working with XML

How to:

Deep Dive

See Also

Swift:
Working with XML