Gathering detailed insights and metrics for @rgrove/parse-xml
Gathering detailed insights and metrics for @rgrove/parse-xml
A fast, safe, compliant XML parser for Node.js and browsers.
npm install @rgrove/parse-xml
Typescript
Module System
Min. Node Version
Node Version
NPM Version
JavaScript (56.22%)
TypeScript (43.63%)
HTML (0.15%)
Total Downloads
10,582,063
Last Day
16,475
Last Week
70,559
Last Month
309,075
Last Year
3,976,025
304 Stars
182 Commits
16 Forks
6 Watching
1 Branches
4 Contributors
Minified
Minified + Gzipped
Latest Version
4.2.0
Package Id
@rgrove/parse-xml@4.2.0
Unpacked Size
366.46 kB
Size
80.96 kB
File Count
82
NPM Version
10.9.0
Node Version
22.10.0
Publised On
25 Oct 2024
Cumulative downloads
Total Downloads
Last day
-2.5%
16,475
Compared to previous day
Last week
-13.9%
70,559
Compared to previous week
Last month
14.9%
309,075
Compared to previous month
Last year
33.6%
3,976,025
Compared to previous year
A fast, safe, compliant XML parser for Node.js and browsers.
npm install @rgrove/parse-xml
Or, if you like living dangerously, you can load the minified bundle in a browser via Unpkg and use the parseXml
global.
Returns a convenient object tree representing an XML document.
Works great in Node.js and browsers.
Provides helpful, detailed error messages with context when a document is not well-formed.
Mostly conforms to XML 1.0 (Fifth Edition) as a non-validating parser (see below for details).
Passes all relevant tests in the XML Conformance Test Suite.
Written in TypeScript and compiled to ES2020 JavaScript for Node.js and ES2017 JavaScript for browsers. The browser build is also optimized for minification.
Zero dependencies.
While this parser is capable of parsing document type declarations (<!DOCTYPE ... >
) and including them in the node tree, it doesn't actually do anything with them. External document type definitions won't be loaded, and the parser won't validate the document against a DTD or resolve custom entity references defined in a DTD.
In addition, the only supported character encoding is UTF-8 because it's not feasible (or useful) to support other character encodings in JavaScript.
ESM
1import { parseXml } from '@rgrove/parse-xml';
2parseXml('<kittens fuzzy="yes">I like fuzzy kittens.</kittens>');
CommonJS
1const { parseXml } = require('@rgrove/parse-xml');
2parseXml('<kittens fuzzy="yes">I like fuzzy kittens.</kittens>');
The result is an XmlDocument
instance containing the parsed document, with a structure that looks like this (some properties and methods are excluded for clarity; see the API docs for details):
1{ 2 type: 'document', 3 children: [ 4 { 5 type: 'element', 6 name: 'kittens', 7 attributes: { 8 fuzzy: 'yes' 9 }, 10 children: [ 11 { 12 type: 'text', 13 text: 'I like fuzzy kittens.' 14 } 15 ], 16 parent: { ... }, 17 isRootNode: true 18 } 19 ] 20}
All parse-xml objects have toJSON()
methods that return JSON-serializable objects, so you can easily convert an XML document to JSON:
1let json = JSON.stringify(parseXml(xml));
When something goes wrong, parse-xml throws an error that tells you exactly what happened and shows you where the problem is so you can fix it.
1parseXml('<foo><bar>baz</foo>');
Output
Error: Missing end tag for element bar (line 1, column 14)
<foo><bar>baz</foo>
^
In addition to a helpful message, error objects have the following properties:
column Number
Column where the error occurred (1-based).
excerpt String
Excerpt from the input string that contains the problem.
line Number
Line where the error occurred (1-based).
pos Number
Character position where the error occurred relative to the beginning of the input (0-based).
There are many XML parsers for Node, and some of them are good. However, most of them suffer from one or more of the following shortcomings:
Native dependencies.
Loose, non-standard parsing behavior that can lead to unexpected or even unsafe results when given input the author didn't anticipate.
Kitchen sink APIs that tightly couple a parser with DOM manipulation functions, a stringifier, or other tooling that isn't directly related to parsing and consuming XML.
Stream-based parsing. This is great in the rare case that you need to parse truly enormous documents, but can be a pain to work with when all you want is a node tree.
Poor error handling.
Too big or too Node-specific to work well in browsers.
parse-xml's goal is to be a small, fast, safe, compliant, non-streaming, non-validating, browser-friendly parser, because I think this is an under-served niche.
I think parse-xml demonstrates that it's not necessary to jettison the spec entirely or to write complex code in order to implement a small, fast XML parser.
Also, it was fun.
Here's how parse-xml's performance stacks up against a few comparable libraries:
While libxmljs2 is faster at parsing medium and large documents, its performance comes at the expense of a large C dependency, no browser support, and a history of security vulnerabilities in the underlying libxml2 library.
In these results, "ops/s" refers to operations per second. Higher is faster.
Node.js v22.10.0 / Darwin arm64
Apple M1 Max
Running "Small document (291 bytes)" suite...
Progress: 100%
@rgrove/parse-xml 4.2.0:
253 082 ops/s, ±0.16% | fastest
fast-xml-parser 4.5.0:
127 232 ops/s, ±0.44% | 49.73% slower
libxmljs2 0.35.0 (native):
68 709 ops/s, ±2.77% | slowest, 72.85% slower
xmldoc 1.3.0 (sax-js):
122 345 ops/s, ±0.15% | 51.66% slower
Finished 4 cases!
Fastest: @rgrove/parse-xml 4.2.0
Slowest: libxmljs2 0.35.0 (native)
Running "Medium document (72081 bytes)" suite...
Progress: 100%
@rgrove/parse-xml 4.2.0:
1 350 ops/s, ±0.18% | 29.5% slower
fast-xml-parser 4.5.0:
560 ops/s, ±0.48% | slowest, 70.76% slower
libxmljs2 0.35.0 (native):
1 915 ops/s, ±2.64% | fastest
xmldoc 1.3.0 (sax-js):
824 ops/s, ±0.20% | 56.97% slower
Finished 4 cases!
Fastest: libxmljs2 0.35.0 (native)
Slowest: fast-xml-parser 4.5.0
Running "Large document (1162464 bytes)" suite...
Progress: 100%
@rgrove/parse-xml 4.2.0:
109 ops/s, ±0.17% | 40.11% slower
fast-xml-parser 4.5.0:
48 ops/s, ±0.55% | slowest, 73.63% slower
libxmljs2 0.35.0 (native):
182 ops/s, ±1.16% | fastest
xmldoc 1.3.0 (sax-js):
73 ops/s, ±0.50% | 59.89% slower
Finished 4 cases!
Fastest: libxmljs2 0.35.0 (native)
Slowest: fast-xml-parser 4.5.0
See the parse-xml-benchmark repo for instructions on how to run this benchmark yourself.
No vulnerabilities found.
Reason
no dangerous workflow patterns detected
Reason
license file detected
Details
Reason
0 existing vulnerabilities detected
Reason
no binaries found in the repo
Reason
detected GitHub workflow tokens with excessive permissions
Details
Reason
0 commit(s) and 0 issue activity found in the last 90 days -- score normalized to 0
Reason
Found 0/30 approved changesets -- score normalized to 0
Reason
no effort to earn an OpenSSF best practices badge detected
Reason
security policy file not detected
Details
Reason
project is not fuzzed
Details
Reason
no SAST tool detected
Details
Reason
dependency not pinned by hash detected -- score normalized to 0
Details
Score
Last Scanned on 2025-01-20
The Open Source Security Foundation is a cross-industry collaboration to improve the security of open source software (OSS). The Scorecard provides security health metrics for open source projects.
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