NAME

XML::Stream - Creates an XML Stream connection and parses return data

SYNOPSIS

XML::Stream is an attempt at solidifying the use of XML via streaming.

DESCRIPTION

This module provides the user with methods to connect to a remote
server, send a stream of XML to the server, and receive/parse an XML
stream from the server.  It is primarily based work for the Etherx XML
router developed by the Jabber Development Team.  For more information
about this project visit http://xmpp.org/protocols/streams/.

XML::Stream gives the user the ability to define a central callback
that will be used to handle the tags received from the server.  These
tags are passed in the format defined at instantiation time.
the closing tag of an object is seen, the tree is finished and passed
to the call back function.  What the user does with it from there is up
to them.

For a detailed description of how this module works, and about the data
structure that it returns, please view the source of Stream.pm and
look at the detailed description at the end of the file.


NOTE: The parser that XML::Stream::Parser provides, as are most Perl
parsers, is synchronous.  If you are in the middle of parsing a
packet and call a user defined callback, the Parser is blocked until
your callback finishes.  This means you cannot be operating on a
packet, send out another packet and wait for a response to that packet.
It will never get to you.  Threading might solve this, but as we all
know threading in Perl is not quite up to par yet.  This issue will be
revisted in the future.

METHODS

new(debug=>string,       - creates the XML::Stream object.  debug
    debugfh=>FileHandle,   should be set to the path for the debug log
    debuglevel=>0|1|N,     to be written.  If set to "stdout" then the
    debugtime=>0|1,        debug will go there.   Also, you can specify
    style=>string)         a filehandle that already exists byt using
                           debugfh.  debuglevel determines the amount
                           of debug to generate.  0 is the least, 1 is
                           a little more, N is the limit you want.
                           debugtime determines wether a timestamp
                           should be preappended to the entry.  style
                           defines the way the data structure is
                           returned.  The two available styles are:

                             tree - XML::Parser Tree format
                             node - XML::Stream::Node format

                           For more information see the respective man
                           pages.

Connect(hostname=>string,       - opens a tcp connection to the
        port=>integer,            specified server and sends the proper
        to=>string,               opening XML Stream tag.  hostname,
        from=>string,             port, and namespace are required.
        myhostname=>string,       namespaces allows you to use
        namespace=>string,        XML::Stream::Namespace objects.
        namespaces=>array,        to is needed if you want the stream
        connectiontype=>string,   to attribute to be something other
        ssl=>0|1,                 than the hostname you are connecting
        ssl_verify                to.  from is needed if you want the
          =>0x00|0x01|0x02|0x04,  stream from attribute to be something
        ssl_ca_path=>string,      other than the hostname you are
        srv=>string)              connecting from.  myhostname should
                                  not be needed but if the module
                                  cannot determine your hostname
                                  properly (check the debug log), set
                                  this to the correct value, or if you
                                  want the other side of the  stream to
                                  think that you are someone else.  The
                                  type determines the kind of
                                  connection that is made:
                                    "tcpip"    - TCP/IP (default)
                                    "stdinout" - STDIN/STDOUT
                                    "http"     - HTTP
                                  HTTP recognizes proxies if the ENV
                                  variables http_proxy or https_proxy
                                  are set.
                                  
                                  ssl specifies whether an SSL socket
                                  should be used for encrypted co-
                                  mmunications.
                                  
                                  ssl_verify determines whether peer
                                  certificate verification takes place.
                                  See the documentation for the
                                  SSL_verify_mode parameter to
                                  L<IO::Socket::SSL->new()|IO::Socket::SSL>.
                                  The default value is 0x01 causing the
                                  server certificate to be verified, and
                                  requiring that ssl_ca_path be set.

                                  ssl_ca_path should be set to the path to
                                  either a directory containing hashed CA
                                  certificates, or a single file containing
                                  acceptable CA certifictes concatenated
                                  together. This parameter is required if
                                  ssl_verify is set to anything other than
                                  0x00 (no verification).

                                  If srv is specified AND Net::DNS is
                                  installed and can be loaded, then
                                  an SRV query is sent to srv.hostname
                                  and the results processed to replace
                                  the hostname and port.  If the lookup
                                  fails, or Net::DNS cannot be loaded,
                                  then hostname and port are left alone
                                  as the defaults.

                                  This function returns the same hash from GetRoot()
                                  below. Make sure you get the SID
                                  (Session ID) since you have to use it
                                  to call most other functions in here.


OpenFile(string) - opens a filehandle to the argument specified, and
                   pretends that it is a stream.  It will ignore the
                   outer tag, and not check if it was a
                   <stream:stream/>. This is useful for writing a
                   program that has to parse any XML file that is
                   basically made up of small packets (like RDF).

Disconnect(sid) - sends the proper closing XML tag and closes the
                  specified socket down.

Process(integer) - waits for data to be available on the socket.  If
                   a timeout is specified then the Process function
                   waits that period of time before returning nothing.
                   If a timeout period is not specified then the
                   function blocks until data is received.  The
                   function returns a hash with session ids as the key,
                   and status values or data as the hash values.

SetCallBacks(node=>function,   - sets the callback that should be
             update=>function)   called in various situations.  node
                                 is used to handle the data structures
                                 that are built for each top level tag.
                                 Update is used for when Process is
                                 blocking waiting for data, but you
                                 want your original code to be updated.

GetRoot(sid) - returns the attributes that the stream:stream tag sent
               by the other end listed in a hash for the specified
               session.

GetSock(sid) - returns a pointer to the IO::Socket object for the
               specified session.

Send(sid,    - sends the string over the specified connection as is.
     string)   This does no checking if valid XML was sent or not.
               Best behavior when sending information.

GetErrorCode(sid) - returns a string for the specified session that
                    will hopefully contain some useful information
                    about why Process or Connect returned an undef
                    to you.

XPath(node,path) - returns an array of results that match the xpath.
                   node can be any of the three types (Tree, Node).

VARIABLES

$NONBLOCKING - tells the Parser to enter into a nonblocking state.  This
               might cause some funky behavior since you can get nested
               callbacks while things are waiting.  1=on, 0=off(default).

EXAMPLES

  ##########################
  # simple example

  use XML::Stream qw( Tree );

  $stream = new XML::Stream;

  my $status = $stream->Connect(hostname => "jabber.org",
                                port => 5222,
                                namespace => "jabber:client");

  if (!defined($status)) {
    print "ERROR: Could not connect to server\n";
    print "       (",$stream->GetErrorCode(),")\n";
    exit(0);
  }

  while($node = $stream->Process()) {
    # do something with $node
  }

  $stream->Disconnect();


  ###########################
  # example using a handler

  use XML::Stream qw( Tree );

  $stream = new XML::Stream;
  $stream->SetCallBacks(node=>\&noder);
  $stream->Connect(hostname => "jabber.org",
		   port => 5222,
		   namespace => "jabber:client",
		   timeout => undef) || die $!;

  # Blocks here forever, noder is called for incoming
  # packets when they arrive.
  while(defined($stream->Process())) { }

  print "ERROR: Stream died (",$stream->GetErrorCode(),")\n";

  sub noder
  {
    my $sid = shift;
    my $node = shift;
    # do something with $node
  }

AUTHOR

Tweaked, tuned, and brightness changes by Ryan Eatmon, reatmon@ti.com in May of 2000. Colorized, and Dolby Surround sound added by Thomas Charron, tcharron@jabber.org By Jeremie in October of 1999 for http://etherx.jabber.org/streams/

Currently maintained by Darian Anthony Patrick.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (C) 1998-2004 Jabber Software Foundation http://jabber.org/

This module licensed under the LGPL, version 2.1.