mod_xml2enc is a transcoding module that can be used to extend the internationalisation support of libxml2-based filter modules by converting encoding before and/or after the filter has run. Thus an unsupported input charset can be converted to UTF-8, and output can also be converted to another charset if required.
Modules that you might use this with include:
There are two usage scenarios:
Modules such as mod_proxy_html version 3.1
and up use the xml2enc_charset optional function to retrieve
the charset argument to pass to the libxml2 parser, and may use the
xml2enc_filter optional function to postprocess to another
encoding. Using mod_xml2enc with an enabled module, no configuration
is necessary: the other module will configure mod_xml2enc for you
(though you may still want to customise it using the configuration
directives below).
To use it with a libxml2-based module that isn't explicitly enabled for mod_xml2enc, you will have to configure the filter chain yourself. For example, to use it with mod_publisher to improve the latter's i18n support with HTML and XML, you could use
FilterProvider iconv xml2enc Content-Type $text/html
FilterProvider iconv xml2enc Content-Type $xml
FilterProvider markup markup-publisher Content-Type $text/html
FilterProvider markup markup-publisher Content-Type $xml
FilterChain iconv markup
mod_publisher will now support any character set supported by either (or both) of libxml2 or apr_xlate/iconv.
Programmers writing libxml2-based filter modules are encouraged to enable them for mod_xml2enc, to provide strong i18n support for your users without reinventing the wheel. The programming API is exposed in mod_xml2enc.h, and a usage example is mod_proxy_html.
The following configuration directives are available:
Syntax xml2EncDefault name
This defines the default encoding to assume when absolutely no charset
information is available from the backend server. The default value for
this is ISO-8859-1, as specified in HTTP/1.0 and assumed in
earlier modules.
Syntax xml2EncAlias charset alias [alias ...]
This server-wide directive aliases one or more charset to another charset. This enables encodings not recognised by libxml2 to be handled internally by libxml2's charset support using the translation table for a recognised charset. This serves two purposes: to support character sets (or names) not recognised either by libxml2 or iconv, and to skip conversion for a charset where it is known to be unnecessary.
Syntax xml2StartParse element [elt*]
Specify that the markup parser should start at the first instance of any of the elements specified. This can be used where a broken backend inserts leading junk that messes up the parser (example here). It should never be used for XML, nor well-formed HTML.
There is currently no direct way to configure post-processing. Another module can invoke post-processing to output a desired character set, but a system administrator cannot do so directly.
mod_xml2enc source code is available under the Apache License, Version 2.0. You'll need both mod_xml2enc.c and mod_xml2enc.h.
The current version is 1.0.3 (October 2009). This is a bugfix against the risk of a segfault if the filter is inserted in a no-content error or bogus response.