# FastXml 0.1.91 - first real release

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/fastxml-0-1-91-first-real-release/136760>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [May 6, 2008, 6:31am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/fastxml-0-1-91-first-real-release/136760 "2008-05-06T06:31:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![bowenmark](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/dc4da7/32.png) [@bowenmark](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/bowenmark)\
**Post date:** [May 6, 2008, 6:31am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/fastxml-0-1-91-first-real-release/136760/1 "2008-05-06T06:31:32Z")

</div>

= FastXml, a simple fast xml library using libxml and libxslt

== Overview

FastXml is:

# not standalone, it _requires libxml_ and _libxslt_

# it attempts to provide the speediest xml parsing library available for

ruby

# it provides an hpricot-like syntax for xml parsing and xslt processing

== Release Notes

This is the first public release, be gentle. Patches/bugs are welcome.

Here’s the output of a simple initial benchmark involving a relatively  
large unicode file against it:  
ruby ./benchmarks/unicode.rb  
user system total real  
fastxml.new 0.030000 0.010000 0.040000 ( 0.059105)  
fastxml.to\_s 0.010000 0.000000 0.010000 ( 0.014552)  
fastxml.search 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 ( 0.001965)

hpricot.new 0.530000 0.020000 0.550000 ( 0.560611)  
hpricot.to\_s 0.160000 0.000000 0.160000 ( 0.162376)  
hpricot.search 0.220000 0.010000 0.230000 ( 0.226655)

libxml.new 0.030000 0.000000 0.030000 ( 0.034130)  
libxml.to\_s 0.020000 0.000000 0.020000 ( 0.017132)  
libxml.search 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 ( 0.002484)

REXML.new 1.080000 0.020000 1.100000 ( 1.126382)  
REXML.to\_s 0.230000 0.010000 0.240000 ( 0.241466)  
REXML.xpath 89.200000 0.400000 89.600000 ( 89.817980)

xpath expression: //p  
fastxml nodes: 10577  
libxml nodes: 10577  
hpricot nodes: 10577  
REXML nodes: 10577

== Installation

# this may take a bit to propagate through the mirrors.

gem install fastxml

or grab the source, build and use rake to install the gem

== Links  
rubyforge page - [http://rubyforge.org/projects/fastxml/](http://rubyforge.org/projects/fastxml/)  
git repo - [GitHub - segfault/fastxml: ruby libxml library targetting speed and ease of use. provides an hpricot-like interface to xml](http://github.com/segfault/fastxml/)