A pure Rust implementation of the Invisible XML (iXML) specification with WebAssembly support.
🌐 Try it live in your browser!
- Standard Demo - Interactive parser with examples
- WASMZ Demo - Native wasm:// routing pattern
Turn any text into XML using simple grammar rules. Works natively in Rust and in the browser via WebAssembly.
- 🚀 Fast native recursive descent parser - Direct interpretation of iXML grammars with seed-growing left-recursion
- ✅ 76.9% spec conformance - 50 out of 65 tests passing, 95.9% correctness (47/49) (details)
- 🌐 WebAssembly support - 50KB gzipped, runs in any modern browser
- 📦 Single dependency - Only
unicode-general-categoryfor native builds - 🔒 Pure safe Rust - No unsafe code
- 🎯 Zero-copy parsing - Efficient memory usage
Add to your Cargo.toml:
[dependencies]
rustixml = "0.2"Example usage:
use rustixml::{parse_ixml_grammar, NativeParser};
fn main() -> Result<(), String> {
// Define an iXML grammar
let grammar = r#"
greeting: "Hello, ", name, "!".
name: letter+.
letter: ["A"-"Z"; "a"-"z"].
"#;
// Parse the grammar
let ast = parse_ixml_grammar(grammar)?;
// Create a parser
let parser = NativeParser::new(ast);
// Parse some input
let xml = parser.parse("Hello, World!")?;
println!("{}", xml);
// Output: <greeting>Hello, <name>World</name>!</greeting>
Ok(())
}<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<script type="module">
import init, { parse_ixml } from './pkg/rustixml.js';
async function run() {
await init();
const grammar = `
greeting: "Hello, ", name, "!".
name: letter+.
letter: ["A"-"Z"; "a"-"z"].
`;
const result = parse_ixml(grammar, "Hello, World!");
if (result.success) {
console.log('XML:', result.output);
} else {
console.error('Error:', result.error);
}
}
run();
</script>
</head>
<body>
<h1>iXML Parser Demo</h1>
</body>
</html>Try it online:
- Standard Demo - Interactive parser with test examples
- WASMZ Demo - Native wasm:// routing pattern
Or run locally:
# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/bigale/rustixml.git
cd rustixml
# Build WASM
wasm-pack build --target web
# Serve the demo
python3 -m http.server 8080
# Open http://localhost:8080/docs/ in your browserThree demo versions available:
docs/index.html- Standard demo (recommended for most users)docs/htmz-standalone.html- HTMZ pattern demo (form-driven, no backend)docs/wasmz.html- WASMZ pattern demo ⭐ (native speed with wasm:// routing!)
See docs/HTMZ-README.md for comparison of all three versions.
WASMZ Pattern: The wasmz.html demo showcases true wasm:// routing where HTML forms directly call compiled Rust functions that return HTML templates. This is a reference implementation of the WASMZ pattern (WebAssembly + htmz) offering ~10x performance improvement over JavaScript. See docs/WASMZ-PATTERN.md for technical details.
Invisible XML (iXML) is a specification for describing text formats as grammars and automatically converting text that matches those grammars into XML. It's like regular expressions on steroids!
Example: Parse CSV into XML:
csv: row+.
row: field+separator, field, newline.
field: char*.
@separator: ",".
-char: ~[","; #0A].
-newline: #0A.
Input:
name,age,city
Alice,30,NYC
Bob,25,LA
Output:
<csv>
<row><field>name</field><field>age</field><field>city</field></row>
<row><field>Alice</field><field>30</field><field>NYC</field></row>
<row><field>Bob</field><field>25</field><field>LA</field></row>
</csv>rustixml uses a native recursive descent parser that directly interprets iXML grammar ASTs. Unlike other implementations that use parser generators, this approach:
- ✅ Eliminates intermediate compilation steps
- ✅ Produces smaller WASM binaries (50KB vs 500KB+)
- ✅ Handles insertion/suppression semantics natively
- ✅ Provides better error messages
See docs/ARCHITECTURE.md for details.
Overall: 50/65 tests (76.9%) Correct tests: 47/49 tests (95.9%)
Major features supported:
- ✅ Full left-recursion support (seed-growing algorithm)
- ✅ Grammar normalization
- ✅ Static ambiguity detection
- ✅ Character classes, marks, repetition
- ✅ Alternatives, sequences, literals
See KNOWN_ISSUES.md for detailed status and roadmap.
cargo build --release# Install wasm-pack if you haven't already
curl https://rustwasm.github.io/wasm-pack/installer/init.sh -sSf | sh
# Build for web
wasm-pack build --target web
# Build for Node.js
wasm-pack build --target nodejs
# Build for bundlers (webpack, rollup, etc.)
wasm-pack build --target bundler# Run unit tests
cargo test
# Run conformance tests
cargo run --bin conformance_testcargo publishwasm-pack build --target web
cd pkg
npm publishContributions are welcome! Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.
Areas where help is especially appreciated:
- 🐛 Fixing failing test cases (see KNOWN_ISSUES.md)
- 📝 Improving documentation
- ✨ Adding examples
- 🧪 Writing more tests
Licensed under either of:
- Apache License, Version 2.0 (LICENSE-APACHE or http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
- MIT license (LICENSE-MIT or http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)
at your option.
- iXML Specification by the Invisible XML Community Group
- iXML Test Suite for comprehensive conformance testing
- Rust and WebAssembly communities for excellent tooling
Made with ❤️ and 🦀 by Alex Everitt