Description

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.

Features

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.
• Support for Canonical XML (C14N).
• Parameters can be passed to the transformation process.
• Debug and profiling information about the transformation process can be saved.
• Available for Mac OS X and Windows.
• Support for 4D 64-bit on Mac & Windows (32-bit mode is no longer supported).
• Support for pre-emptive multi-threading.
• Support for Intel and Apple Silicon based Macs.
• Fully compatible with 4D v18, v19 and v20.

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.

Here is a list of the features you won’t find in the built-in commands:

• 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, Relax NG and Schematron).
• 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.

Licensing & pricing

XML Plugin has a very simple licensing scheme:

• € 400 per platform (Mac or Windows)
• € 600 if both platforms are purchased at once (Mac and Windows)

Both licenses allow unlimited deployment.
Updates from version 4.x are available for € 300 per license (Mac or Windows) or € 400 for licenses covering both platforms (Mac and Windows).

Download

Version 5.0 is now available!
Click on the following links to download a demo version of XML Plugin.
XML Plugin for Mac & Windows

Version 4.0 can be downloaded here
XML Plugin version 4.0.1 for Mac & Windows

Version 3.5 can be downloaded here
XML Plugin version 3.5 for Mac & Windows