Why can't I parse a XML file using QXmlStreamReader from Qt?

Question

I\'m trying to figure out how QXmlStreamReader works for a C++ application I\'m writing. The XML file I want to parse is a large dictionary with a convoluted structure and plent

Answer 1

I'm answering this myself as this problem was related to three issues, two of which were brought up by the responses.

1. The file actually wasn't UTF-8 encoded. I changed the encoding to iso-8859-1 and the encoding warning disappeared.
2. The text() function doesn't work as I expected. I have to use readElementText() to read the entries' contents.
3. When I try to readElementText() on an element that doesn't contain text, like the top-level in my case, the parser returns an "Expected character data" error and the parsing is interrupted. I find this behaviour strange (in my opinion returning an empty string and continuing would be better) but I guess as long as the specification is known, I can work around it and avoid calling this function on every entry.

The relevant code section that works as expected now looks like this:

while (!xml.atEnd() && !xml.hasError()) 
{
    xml.readNext();
    if (xml.isStartElement())
    {
        QString name = xml.name().toString();
        if (name == "firstname" || name == "surname" || 
            name == "email" || name == "website")
        {
            cout << "element name: '" << name  << "'" 
                         << ", text: '" << xml.readElementText() 
                         << "'" << endl;
        }
    }
}
if (xml.hasError())
{
    cout << "XML error: " << xml.errorString() << endl;
}
else if (xml.atEnd())
{
    cout << "Reached end, done" << endl;
}