MKDoc::XML::Stripper(3) Remove unwanted XML / XHTML tags and attributes

SYNOPSIS


use MKDoc::XML::Stripper;
my $stripper = new MKDoc::XML::Stripper;
$stripper->allow (qw /p class id/);
my $ugly = '<p class="para" style="color:red">Hello, <strong>World</strong>!</p>';
my $neat = $stripper->process_data ($ugly);
print $neat;

Should print: 

  <p class="para">Hello, World!</p>

SUMMARY

MKDoc::XML::Stripper is a class which lets you specify a set of tags and attributes which you want to allow, and then cheekily strip any XML of unwanted tags and attributes.

In MKDoc, this is used so that editors use structural XHTML rather than presentational tags, i.e. strip anything which looks like a <font> tag, a 'style' attribute or other tags which would break separation of structure from content.

DISCLAIMER

This module does low level XML manipulation. It will somehow parse even broken XML and try to do something with it. Do not use it unless you know what you're doing.

API

my $stripper = MKDoc::XML::Stripper->new()

Instantiates a new MKDoc::XML::Stripper object.

$stripper->load_def ($def_name);

Loads a definition located somewhere in @INC under MKDoc/XML/Stripper.

Available definitions are:

xhtml10frameset
xhtml10strict
xhtml10transitional
mkdoc16 - MKDoc 1.6. XHTML structural markup

You can also load your own definition file, for instance: 

  $stripper->load_def ('my_def.txt');

Definitions are simple text files as follows: 

  # allow p with 'class' and id
  p class
  p id
  # allow more stuff
  td class
  td id
  td style  
  # etc...

$stripper->allow ($tag, @attributes)

Allows ``<$tag>'' to appear in the stripped XML. Additionally, allows @attributes to appear as attributes of <$tag>, so for instance: 

  $stripper->allow ('p', 'class', 'id');

Will allow the following: 

  <p>
  <p class="foo">
  <p id="bar">
  <p class="foo" id="bar">

However any extra attributes will be stripped, i.e. 

  <p class="foo" id="bar" style="font-color: red">

Will be rewritten as 

  <p class="foo" id="bar">

$stripper->disallow ($tag)

Explicitly disallows a tag and all its associated attributes. By default everything is disallowed.

$stripper->process_data ($some_xml);

Strips $some_xml according to the rules that were given with the allow() and disallow() methods and returns the result. Does not modify $some_xml in place.

$stripper->process_file ('/an/xml/file.xml');

Strips '/an/xml/file.xml' according to the rules that were given with the allow() and disallow() methods and returns the result. Does not modify '/an/xml/file.xml' in place.

NOTES

MKDoc::XML::Stripper does not really parse the XML file you're giving to it nor does it care if the XML is well-formed or not. It uses MKDoc::XML::Tokenizer to turn the XML / XHTML file into a series of MKDoc::XML::Token objects and strictly operates on a list of tokens.

For this same reason MKDoc::XML::Stripper does not support namespaces.

AUTHOR

Copyright 2003 - MKDoc Holdings Ltd.

Author: Jean-Michel Hiver

This module is free software and is distributed under the same license as Perl itself. Use it at your own risk.

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