Crate ifc_xml 

ifc-xml — the ifcXML (ISO 10303-28) codec.

Why this crate exists

It is the proof that serialization is genuinely pluggable. It implements the same ifc_model::Codec trait as ifc-step, over the same ifc_model::Model, and the model needed no change to accommodate it. A third encoding (IFC-JSON) would be another crate beside these two.

The interesting difference from STEP

STEP records are positional: #5=IFCWALL('guid',#1,$). ifcXML is named: <IfcWall id="i5" GlobalId="guid" .../>. Crossing between them needs the schema to map slot 0 to GlobalId.

That would make the schema a hard dependency of the codec, which would break round-tripping for files whose schema we do not have. So the schema is optional:

• with a schema: conformant named attributes.
• without: positional fallback names (a0, a1, …).

Both round-trip losslessly, and the fallback is clearly marked in the output rather than silently producing wrong names. Namespace conformance is separately explicit: XmlCodec::strict selects one exact XmlProfile, while the default keeps the historical compatibility dialect.

Neither is valid against the release XSD. The strict profile writes this crate’s own layout under the XSD’s target namespace and the release’s schema token; it does not write the XSD configuration (upper-case STEP type names, i<n> ids, kind elements and a schema root attribute are its own). An opt-in test, tests/xsd_output.rs, validates strict output from the fixture corpus with xmllint against the fetched XSDs and fails on any departure beyond those it documents.

Reading with a schema is strict

XML attribute values are untyped strings. With a schema, the reader types each value from its attribute’s declaration (SchemaReading::Strict, the default): Name="1" is the label '1', never the integer 1, and a name the entity does not declare is an XmlError::UnknownAttribute naming entity, element and attribute, never a value in the next free slot. SchemaReading::Lenient restores inference, which round-trips models the schema does not describe at the price of misreading such values.

The buildingSMART XSD configuration

XmlCodec::xsd reads the ifcXML configuration the release XSD declares (IFC4 ADD2 TC1, IFC4X3 ADD2): entities nested and defined in place, ref/href references, inverse attributes, -wrapper typed values, space-separated list attributes. It reads into the same ifc_model::Model as the document’s STEP form, and refuses with a typed error what it cannot read exactly. It does not write. The rules are in the xsd module documentation; a schema-backed test checks them against both XSDs.

use ifc_xml::{XmlCodec, XmlProfile};
use std::sync::Arc;

// `schema` is the IFC4 schema, e.g. `ifc_schema::ifc4()`.
let codec = XmlCodec::xsd(Arc::new(schema), XmlProfile::Ifc4Add2Tc1);
let xml = br#"<ifcXML xmlns="https://standards.buildingsmart.org/IFC/RELEASE/IFC4/ADD2_TC1/XML">
  <IfcPerson FamilyName="1"/>
</ifcXML>"#;
let model = ifc_xml::reader::read(&codec, xml).unwrap();
let person = model.get(ifc_model::EntityId(1)).unwrap();
assert_eq!(&*person.type_name, "IFCPERSON");
assert_eq!(person.text(0), Some("1"));

use ifc_model::{Codec, Entity, EntityId, Model, Value};
use ifc_xml::XmlCodec;

let mut model = Model::new();
model.insert(
    EntityId(1),
    Entity::new("IFCCOSTITEM", vec![Value::Text("Excavation".into())]),
);

let bytes = XmlCodec::default().write_bytes(&model).unwrap();
let reparsed = XmlCodec::default().read_bytes(&bytes).unwrap();
assert_eq!(&*reparsed.get(EntityId(1)).unwrap().type_name, "IFCCOSTITEM");

Re-exports

pub use error::XmlError;

pub use error::XmlPath;

Modules

error

Why an ifcXML operation failed.

reader

ifcXML text to Model.

writer

Model to ifcXML text.

Structs

XmlCodec

The ifcXML codec.

Enums

SchemaReading

How a native-layout codec with a schema treats content the schema does not declare.

XmlLayout

Which XML layout a codec reads and writes.

XmlProfile

A release-specific ifcXML namespace/profile contract.