A KISS pure Fortran Library for parsing XML files

• FoXy is a pure Fortran (KISS) library for modern Fortran projects;
• FoXy is Fortran 2008+ standard compliant;
• FoXy is OOP designed;
• FoXy is a Free, Open Source Project.

What is FoXy? | Aims | Status | Documentation | Copyrights

Modern Fortran standards (2003+) have introduced better support for strings manipulations. Exploiting such new Fortran capabilities, FoXy is aimed to provide an easy to use module library to parse and emit XML files and or tags.

Other programming languages have many libraries for XML parsing, Fortran has less options, but some there are:

• xml-fortran of Arjen Markus;
• xml-f90 of Alberto Garcia;
• fox of Andrew Walker that is an improved fork of xml-f90 of Alberto Garcia;
• tixi from DLR Simulation and Software Technology (C-binding).

All of the above are great codes, but lack in some points that we would like to have:

• actively maintained;
• designed for modern Fortran:
  • OOP designed;
  • exploiting new features of Fortran (e.g. deferred length allocatable characters);
  • recreate a pure Fortran representation of the XML data (e.g. tree structure exploiting);
• parallel architectures supported (threads/processes safety ensured);
• extensively tested (strong unit-test regression);
• comprehensively documented;
• pure Fortran:
  • no wrapper;
  • no bindings, no ISO_C_BINDING;
• be FOSS.

In some sense or other, the afore-mentioned Fortran libraries miss somethings.

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• lint baseline code:
  • purge doxygen, format docstrings for FORD;
  • adopt best practice of Rouson;
  • clean the API: two modules, one main XML file object;
• parse input string:
  • autoparse tags:
    • autoparse tag's name;
    • autoparse tag's value;
    • autoparse tag's attributes names;
    • autoparse tag's attributes values;
• lazy find tag value into file (once provided a tag name);
• parse input file;
• fix bug on tag's attributes name parsing.

• implement nested tags delete;
• implement lazy find tag's value attribute into file (once provided a tag name and attribute name).

• create team of collaborators;
• profile the parser:
  • almost surely there are performance penalties;

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Besides this README file the FoXy documentation is contained into its own wiki. Detailed documentation of the API is contained into the GitHub Pages that can also be created locally by means of ford tool.

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FoXy is an open source project, it is distributed under a multi-licensing system:

• for FOSS projects:
  • GPL v3;
• for closed source/commercial projects:
  • BSD 2-Clause;
  • BSD 3-Clause;
  • MIT.

Anyone is interest to use, to develop or to contribute to FoXy is welcome, feel free to select the license that best matches your soul!

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