How to parse a incomplete xml file

[praveenss]

I have to write a program where we get the xml file incrementally. i.e the file is constantly updated in the form of xml feed. Thus the first chunk will not be a well formed xml document. However i need to parse the feeds regularly and display the parsed result.

How can this be achieved.?

Eg...

xml field can be following

First chunk is as follows: We can see it is not well formed
<xml>
<results>
<result1>
</result1?
<result2>
</result2>


The next chunk will be

<result3>
</result3>
<result4>
</result4>
</results>
</xml>



Please help!! I would be greatful if you could provide me with sample code or some links which i can follow.

TIA

[weaknessforcats]

If your XML file is updated while you are processing it, you will have a real problem.

Where does the "constantly updated" occur? Do you have any control over this? Is there a window where you know no updating will occcur so you can fetch the file?

[gpraghuram]

My suggestion wuld be you have to wait for the whole file to be received and then parse it.
Raghu

[praveenss]

@weaknessforcats
The file is not updated. At this point i can say that i get every chunk as a char buffer.
So basically there is no file which is got but it is the chunks of data as a char buffer which i get from the server.
The feed is terminated after all chunks have arrived with the closing tag.

So if we put together all the chunks then we get the well formed xml body in a char buffer. If written to a file then we get the well formed xml file. But the objective is to process every chunk and display on the UI

[weaknessforcats]

I don't know if processing individual "chunks" is possible. A syntax may be split over different "chunks".

Why can't you write the XML data to disc and start your browser? Certainly you are not attempting to write an XML parser from scratch. Yes? Doing so will will occupy the rest of your lifetime.

[jkmyoung]

Note, this Question comes from XML forum, but was split out due to the stream question. Although not stated here, the given solution in the other thread leads to another question:

How does one take different inputs, and feed them one at a time through a stream?

This way an event driven parser can look at the stream as the data comes in.