# xml.reader > A module of xml's API. `xml.reader` — a pull parser over an in-memory XML document. `XmlReader.next()` hands back one `XmlEvent` at a time: a start tag (with its attributes), an end tag, a run of text, or end of input. Self-closing tags produce a start *and* an end event, so a consumer never has to special-case ``. Comments, processing instructions, the XML declaration and DOCTYPE are skipped; CDATA sections come back as text, verbatim. Entity references are decoded in text and attribute values: the five predefined ones (`<` `>` `&` `"` `'`) and numeric character references (`A`, `A`). Anything else is an error rather than being passed through, because an API response carrying an undeclared entity is malformed and silently keeping `&foo;` would hide that. What this is not: a validating parser. It checks that tags nest and close with matching names — the property every consumer relies on — and nothing about DTDs or schemas. Namespaces are left as written (`ec2:item` stays `ec2:item`); `local_name` strips a prefix when a consumer wants to ignore it. ## Structs ### `Attr` ```mojo struct Attr ``` One `name="value"` pair, value already entity-decoded. Implements: `Copyable`, `Movable` Fields: - `name: String` - `value: String` ### `XmlEvent` ```mojo struct XmlEvent ``` Implements: `Copyable`, `Movable` Fields: - `kind: Int`: One of `EVENT_START`, `EVENT_END`, `EVENT_TEXT`, `EVENT_EOF`. - `name: String`: The tag name for start and end events; empty otherwise. - `text: String`: The decoded text for text events; empty otherwise. - `attrs: List[Attr]`: The attributes of a start tag, in document order. ### `XmlReader` ```mojo struct XmlReader ``` Pull parser over a document held in memory. The reader owns a copy of the bytes, so the source string may go away. Call `next()` until it returns an `EVENT_EOF` event; a malformed document raises with the byte offset where parsing stopped. Implements: `Movable` #### `__init__` ```mojo def __init__(out self, doc: String) ``` #### `depth` ```mojo def depth(self) -> Int ``` How many elements are open at the current position. #### `next` ```mojo def next(mut self) -> XmlEvent ``` ## Functions ### `is_blank` ```mojo def is_blank(s: String) -> Bool ``` True when `s` is only XML whitespace — the indentation between tags. ### `local_name` ```mojo def local_name(name: String) -> String ``` `ec2:item` → `item`; a name without a prefix is returned unchanged. ### `decode_entities` ```mojo def decode_entities(raw: Span[UInt8]) -> String ``` Decodes the predefined and numeric entity references in `raw`. ## Aliases ### `EVENT_START` ```mojo comptime EVENT_START = 1 ``` ### `EVENT_END` ```mojo comptime EVENT_END = 2 ``` ### `EVENT_TEXT` ```mojo comptime EVENT_TEXT = 3 ``` ### `EVENT_EOF` ```mojo comptime EVENT_EOF = 4 ```