XML Plugin is a plugin for the 4th Dimension programming language that allows you to read and write XML documents in a more easy way. It goes far beyond the built-in XML commands of 4D.

There are several ways to access and interact with XML data. XML Plugin uses the Document Object Model (DOM), meaning the XML data is parsed into a tree object that can be navigated in an interactive way. It also allows you to modify an existing document or to create a new document from scratch and save it back to disk. The plugin takes care of all the formatting issues involved for creating well-formed XML files, so you don't have to.

XML Plugin also allows you transform XML documents using stylesheets. XSL stands for eXtensible Style Language. XSL is a language that allows you to extract information from an XML document and re-order the output to a new format. This process is called Transforming which explains the letter T.

XSL allows you to separate content and layout from each other. The XML document holds the content in a structured format. The stylesheet specifies how to present this information. XSL is mostly used for cross-media publishing, where the same information has to be output to different kinds of media. The best known example is a newspaper that wants to publish its stories in a printed format, on the website and on small electronic devices like organizers or mobile phones. Because each output medium has its specific characteristics, it's important to re-use the same data and format it to the particular needs of the output medium.

What's new in version 3.0?'

• Version 3.0 has been optimized to work with 4D v11 and higher. At the same time it is still compatible with 4D 2004.
• The plugin fully supports the new Unicode features of 4D.
• New commands have been added to allow working with huge (> 100 MB) XML documents. The XML Reader and XML Writer can handle very large documents because they do not keep the entire XML document into memory like the DOM commands do. Instead they process the document in chunks.

Here is a short list of the features available in XML Plugin:

• Fast RAM based XML parser.
• Create, open and save documents from and to to disk files or blob variables.
• Navigate through XML data using the Document Object Model.
• Work with huge XML documents using the XML Reader and XML Writer commands.
• Get and set values and attributes of nodes.
• Add, copy and delete nodes.
• Support for various encodings such as ISO8859-1, UTF-8 and UTF-16.
• A full validating parser with support for DTD, XML Schema and Relax NG schemas.
• Apply a SAX style callback method to the DOM tree.
• Support for namespaces.
• Support for XSL, XPath, XInclude and XPointer.
• Support for EXSLT, a set of extensions to XSLT.
• Support for GZip compressed XML data.
• Parameters can be passed to the transformation process.
• Debug and profiling information about the transformation process can be saved.
• Universal Binary support on Mac.
• Unicode support with 4D v11 and higher.
• Compatible with 4D v11, v12 and higher

XML Plugin is available for Mac OS X and Windows (on Mac OS X 10.4 or higher is required) and works with 4D 2004, v11, v12 and higher.

Differences with the built-in XML commands

Starting with 4D 2003, 4D offers some built-in commands for dealing with XML. Where 4D 2003 only contains commands for reading an XML document, 4D 2004 offers commands for both reading and writing. XML Plugin offers a more complete set of commands with more advanced features. And according to some developers, it is easier to use.

• More powerful navigation commands that make it easier to find the data you are looking for.
• Apply a 4D method against a DOM tree, so you don't have to write recursive code to traverse the DOM tree yourself.
• Full support for XPath (not just a subset) that allow you to query XML documents as if it were a database.
• The XML Reader and XML Writer commands can be used to work with multiple XML documents simultaneously.
• The XML Reader commands supports validation against a DTD.
• The XML Writer commands handle encoding of special characters automatically.
• Support for namespaces and XInclude.
• Support for various schema techniques (DTD, XML Schema and Relax NG).
• Support for GZip compressed XML (both for reading and writing).
• Various parsing options that give you more control on white-space handling, allow you to disable DTD validation and substitution of entity references.
• Save fragments of an XML document (snippets).
• Validate a created or modified document against a schema definition.
• Support for a callback method that loads external resources such as DTDs from the database instead of the internet.
• Support for node types such as comments, processing instructions and DTDs.
• Ability to insert nodes before, after or as a child of another node.
• Copy nodes or complete node trees from one document to another.
• Get the line number of a node in the source document, which makes it easier to debug/inspect XML documents.
• Descriptive error messages telling you what is wrong with your code or the XML document.

XML Plugin has a very simple licensing scheme:

€ 300 per platform (Mac or Windows)
€ 500 if both platforms are purchased at once (Mac and Windows)

Both licenses allow unlimited deployment.

Version 3.0.1 is now available!

Click on the following links to download a demo version of XML Plugin.

XML Plugin for Macintosh

XML Plugin for Windows

Version 2.1.2 can be downloaded here

XML Plugin version 2.1.2 for Mac

XML Plugin version 2.1.2 for Windows

Please note that the files in these archives are the same.
The only difference is the packaging (.dmg versus .zip).