XML_PullParser moves the API of the PHP XML facility from an event-based model to a token-based model. Instead of processing data as it is passed from the parser to callbacks, a script using PullParser requests tokens. Tokens are arrays representing XML structures, which become available in the order in which they appear in the document being parsed. Methods are provided both to get tokens and to extract their data.

his is a Class modeled on the PullParser module found in the Perl HTML::Parser distribution. It moves the API from an event-based model to a token-based model. Instead of processing data as it is passed from the parser to callbacks, a script using XML_PullParser requests "tokens" from various "tokenizing" functions, most particularly from XML_PullParser_getToken. and XML_PullParser_getElement. Tokens are arrays representing XML structures, which become available in the order in which they appear in the document being parsed.

In addtion to the tokenizers, a rich set of accessors are provided to extract data from the elements and attributes bundled in the tokens. There are also techniques and class methods for selecting elements and attributes, and for testing for their position and relevancy. Finally, there are package-level functions to set the contexts that affect the operations of the module.