Boost library, using std::wstring as filename with boost::property_tree::read_xml

Question

I recently started using std::wstring instead of std::string to avoid weird results with non-ASCII characters, and I didn't find a way to read an XML file where the path is of type std::wstring using the boost library.

I'm using the boost library quiet a lot nowadays.

I use the boost::property_tree::read_xml function with boost::property_tree::wptree instead of the usual ptree struct. But sadly I cannot feed a std::wstring as the first parameter to read_xml which makes it all harder.

My question is, are there any work around for reading a XML file where the path is storted as a std::wstring?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

You could use the Boost Iostreams file_descriptor_sink device which supports wpath from Boost Filesystem:

#include <boost/property_tree/xml_parser.hpp>
#include <boost/iostreams/device/file_descriptor.hpp>
#include <boost/iostreams/stream.hpp>
#include <boost/filesystem.hpp>
#include <iostream>

namespace pt = boost::property_tree;
namespace io = boost::iostreams;
namespace fs = boost::filesystem;

int main()
{
    fs::wpath const fname = L"test.xml";
    io::file_descriptor_source fs(fname);
    io::stream<io::file_descriptor_source> fsstream(fs);

    pt::ptree xml;
    pt::read_xml(fsstream, xml);

    for (auto const& node : xml.get_child("root"))
        std::cout << node.first << ": " << node.second.get_value<std::string>() << "\n";
}

See it Live On Coliru where it uses the input file:

<root>
    <child nodetype="element" with="attributes">monkey show</child>
    <child nodetype="element">monkey do</child>
</root>

and prints:

child: monkey show
child: monkey do