Binary in XML?

I don't believe any standard exists for XML, but one method that has proven useful is to Base64 encode the data in the XML file.

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Original post by daerid I don't believe any standard exists for XML, but one method that has proven useful is to Base64 encode the data in the XML file.

Interesting, I'll have a Wiki on it. Thanks for the info!

An alternative to Base64 encoding is ASCII85 encoding, which is slightly more compact and possibly easier to encode/decode.

Size Increase:
Ascii85 - 125%
base-64 - 133%

You'll need to create your own encoder or use a pre-existing one. At the point, it may actually be easier to come up with a binary format for your data file and write a simple GUI tool to allow users to edit their decks.

about half way down the page http://www.w3schools.com/xml/xml_cdata.asp, it describes the CDATA element (which prevents your XML parser from trying to interpret your binary/hex/base64 data).

You might try looking into XMP.

http://www.adobe.com/products/xmp/

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Original post by krez about half way down the page http://www.w3schools.com/xml/xml_cdata.asp, it describes the CDATA element (which prevents your XML parser from trying to interpret your binary/hex/base64 data).

Unfortunately, CDATA sections are not the magic bullet they appear to be. The problem is that, although the contents of the CDATA section are ignored, it is not skipped over entirely because the parser must still watch for the ending CDATA tag "]]>". This, of course, means that you must be able to guarantee that your data will never contain those characters in that particular sequence, sure the odds are low and you can take your chances, but at some point in the future you can bet that your application will fail innexplicably due to this very problem. CDATA sections also cannot contain space or newline characters.

Even if you attempted to fix this problem by embedding escape sequences within the Binary data (which would still never provide you a guarantee) the parsing which would be required as a result would be much slower than base64 or Ascii85 to decode (I'd estimate 20 times slower at a minimum.)

As for XMP, that seems not to fit the bill since its embedding metadata to a single binary file, while the OP is looking to embed multiple binary data files into an XML file (which is essentially text-based metadata in this case.)

I've been looking into embedding binary data into XML myself and base64 or Ascii 85 are the best options in my oppinion.

http://www.w3.org/XML/Binary/
or
http://www.matroska.org/

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It was derived from a project called MCF, but differentiates from it significantly because it is based on EBML (Extensible Binary Meta Language), a binary derivative of XML.