libxml2-wasm

libxml2-wasm

Disclaimer

Current version is for feasibility/performance evaluation only

The api may have breaking changes in patch versions.

Why another xml lib?

Compiling C library libxml2 to WebAssembly brings benefits of both pure javascript implementation or native addons, and avoided their drawbacks:

• Good performance: roughly same as the native addons, and much better than pure javascript implementations
• Better compatibility: don't need to compile to every platform, nodeJs version, or dependency libraries(e.g. glibc); and supports browsers too.
• Comprehensive functionality(To be finished): backed by libxml2, we just need some wrappers being callable by javascript.

Documentation

https://jameslan.github.io/libxml2-wasm/index.html

Supported Environments

This library uses ES Module and top level await, so it require the following environment.

Environment	Version
NodeJs	v14.8+
Chrome	V89+
Edge	V89+
Safari	v15+

Benchmark

To run the benchmark, build the lib first,

npm ci && npm run build

Then run test in benchmark directory,

cd benchmark && npm ci
npm test

libxmljs2 is js binding to native library libxml2; while fast-xml and xmldoc are pure javascript implementations.

Environment: NodeJs v18.17.1 on Darwin x64 Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-9880H CPU @ 2.30GHz

Running "fixtures/small.xml: 787 chars" suite...
Progress: 100%

  libxml2-wasm:
    59 122 ops/s, ±3.49%   | fastest

  libxmljs2:
    20 392 ops/s, ±10.93%   | 65.51% slower

  fast-xml-parser:
    15 433 ops/s, ±6.45%   | 73.9% slower

  xmldoc:
    12 842 ops/s, ±4.01%   | slowest, 78.28% slower

Running "fixtures/medium.xml: 35562 chars" suite...
Progress: 100%

  libxml2-wasm:
    2 294 ops/s, ±3.21%   | 32.75% slower

  libxmljs2:
    3 411 ops/s, ±10.12%   | fastest

  fast-xml-parser:
    845 ops/s, ±3.29%     | 75.23% slower

  xmldoc:
    720 ops/s, ±2.75%     | slowest, 78.89% slower

Running "fixtures/large.xml: 2337522 chars" suite...
Progress: 100%

  libxml2-wasm:
    18 ops/s, ±3.66%   | fastest

  libxmljs2:
    12 ops/s, ±28.60%   | 33.33% slower

  fast-xml-parser:
    6 ops/s, ±6.83%    | 66.67% slower

  xmldoc:
    4 ops/s, ±8.64%    | slowest, 77.78% slower