Adapters

Purpose

This section describes the supported XML adapters, their capabilities, and how to choose the right adapter for your needs.

What are adapters?

Moxml uses an adapter pattern to provide a unified interface over different XML processing libraries. Each adapter wraps a specific XML library (Nokogiri, LibXML, Oga, REXML, or Ox) and provides consistent behavior through Moxml’s API.

Available adapters

Nokogiri adapter

Industry standard XML library with excellent performance and full XPath 1.0 support. Recommended for most use cases.

LibXML adapter

Alternative to Nokogiri using native libxml2 bindings. Excellent performance with full feature support.

Oga adapter

Pure Ruby XML parser with no C extensions. Ideal for JRuby, TruffleRuby, or environments where C extensions are not allowed.

REXML adapter

Ruby standard library XML parser. Always available, requiring no additional gems. Best for maximum portability.

Ox adapter

Fastest XML parser with minimal memory footprint. Best for simple documents and high-throughput scenarios.

Adapter comparison

Refer to the Compatibility matrix for detailed feature comparison across all adapters.

Quick selection guide

Use case Recommended adapter

General XML processing

Nokogiri

Maximum performance

Ox or LibXML

Pure Ruby environment

Oga

No external dependencies

REXML

Complex XPath queries

Nokogiri or LibXML

Simple documents, high speed

Ox

Switching adapters

Change adapters at runtime:

# Global default
Moxml::Config.default_adapter = :libxml

# Per instance
context = Moxml.new
context.config.adapter = :oga

# With configuration
moxml = Moxml.new do |config|
  config.adapter = :nokogiri
  config.strict_parsing = true
end

Next steps

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