Whitespaces around character entities

Open
  • Is something wrong?
#900 3 comments 2 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Maintainers usually reply within 1 day

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
rust
Domain
backend

Research direction

Start by reading the Config::trim_text behavior and the deserializer path that handles text and decoded character entities; the report includes a reproducer using NsReader and quick_xml::de::Deserializer::borrowing. Check existing tests for trimming and entity decoding, then determine whether a configuration option can preserve spaces around entities while trimming only leading and trailing text. Done means the reproducer retains those internal spaces without losing global edge trimming.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

help wanted serde

I maintain a large codebase that used quick-xml for years across hundreds of structs.

After switching from 0.37.5 to 0.38, I hit the already well-known whitespace issues. 0.38.1 introduced Config::trim_text which saved me from touching thousands of fields, but now I found the next caveat: XML character entities make trim_text(true) trim more than needed:

#!/usr/bin/env cargo
---
[dependencies]
serde = { version = "1", features = ["derive"] }
quick-xml = { version = "0.38", features = ["serialize"] }
quick-xml-old = { package = "quick-xml", version = "0.37", features = ["serialize"] }
---

use quick_xml::reader::NsReader;
use serde::Deserialize;
use std::result::Result;

#[derive(Debug, Deserialize)]
struct Root {
    bar: String,
}

pub fn from_str_trim_text<'de, T>(s: &'de str) -> Result<T, Box<dyn std::error::Error>>
where
    T: Deserialize<'de>,
{
    let mut reader = NsReader::from_str(s);
    let config = reader.config_mut();

    config.trim_text(true); // Trims also spaces around decoded &amp;
    config.expand_empty_elements = true;

    let mut de = quick_xml::de::Deserializer::borrowing(reader);
    Ok(T::deserialize(&mut de)?)
}

fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>> {
    let xml = r#"
    <root>
        <bar>
            Foo &amp; Bar  &amp;  Baz Qux   Quux
        </bar>
    </root>"#;

    let old: Root = quick_xml_old::de::from_str(xml)?;
    let new: Root = quick_xml::de::from_str(xml)?;
    let new_trimming: Root = from_str_trim_text(xml)?;

    println!("Old: {}", old.bar); // "Foo & Bar  &  Baz Qux   Quux"
    println!("New: {}", new.bar); // "\n            Foo & Bar  &  Baz Qux   Quux\n        "
    println!("New trimming: {}", new_trimming.bar); // "Foo&Bar&Baz Qux   Quux"

    Ok(())
}

(cargo +nightly -Zscript example.rs)

I know this is documented behavior (thank you), so I'm not calling it a bug. I’m looking for a solution to preserve "internal" spaces (e.g, around the decoded entities) while still trimming leading/trailing whitespace globally.

The only workaround that comes to my mind atm is either introducing a newtype or using deserialize_with, which are both rather error-prone in a mature codebase like mine and require tons of work.

If there is no existing solution right now, I could try to implement a feature (e.g., a new config option?) if the maintainers think it is a good idea.

Dominant language
Rust
Stars
1.6k
Forks
299
Avg merge
2d 4h
Merged PRs (30d)
9

Getting set up

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

More from tafia/quick-xml

All issues in tafia/quick-xml

Similar issues

More Rust issues

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.