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RE: [xml-dev] hackable xml
XForms makes writing UI for this type of thing trivial. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <?xml-stylesheet href="/xsltforms/xsltforms.xsl" type="text/xsl"?> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:xf="http://www.w3.org/2002/xforms" xmlns:s="http://somecomp.com"> <head> <title>Config</title> <model xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2002/xforms"> <xf:instance src="config.xml" /> <xf:submission resource="config.xml" method="put" id="save" /> </model> </head> <body> <group xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2002/xforms"> <input ref="s:foo"> <label>Foo: </label> </input> <submit submission='save'> <label>Save</label> </submit> </group> </body> </html> A key observation of XForms is relevant here: the use of the ref attribute. It indicates an XPath location path to a nodeset, whose first node is then accessed. In most cases, it's interpreted as the leaf-node simpleType value. Although you said you don't want a dependency on an API, it's not possible to avoid one. The Groovy example uses an XmlParser, which is an API. I won't sing the praises of JDOM here, other than to say I believe it's the most succinct imperative XML API I've seen, and it's quite stable. While it would be nice if it offered JDK 1.5 generics, we've written JDOMUtil, a single file of enhancements offered as static methods provides both the "ref" power of XForms and the type-safe collections of JDK 1.5. Here's a sample showing use of a few such utilities: List<Element> rootPartitions = JDOMUtil.selectElements( rootElement, "/ContentStore/roots/root" ); and setEnableCount(JDOMUtil.parseBoolean(JDOMUtil.ref(root, "/ContentStore/enableCount", "false")); So the foo config example could be written like this: Document config = JDOMUtil.parse(new File("file.xml")); JDOMUtil.setRef(root, "/config/foo", "xyz"); If you insist on using namespaces, use the version with the trailing list of namespaces arg: JDOMUtil.setRef(root, "/s:config/s:foo", "xyz", Namespace.getNamespace("s", "http://somecomp.com")); Leigh. -----Original Message----- From: Tony Nassar [mailto:] Sent: Thursday, August 12, 2010 1:13 PM To: xml-dev Subject: RE: [xml-dev] hackable xml Wow! I very often have to handle documents with multiple namespaces. Admittedly, I don't think that collisions between element names have ever been issue. I think that that the problem here is not XML, it's the APIs. I have no trouble with XSLT, but my coworkers do, and if I had to carry out the task that Andrew describes, I'd probably resort to sed -i! I avoid DOM like the plague, and don't want to have a dependence on JDOM or some other API. I work for a Java-intensive shop, but I'd recommend Groovy (a dynamic language build on top of Java). I believe there is a Python library that does similar things to the following (I'm sure Javascript does, too, but it's not an option for me). I really don't think this could be any easier. // Here's the problem statement. welch = """<config xmlns="http://somecomp.com"> <foo>abc</foo> </config> """ // parsed into a nested plain old Java object config = new XmlParser().parseText(welch) // Set the value. config.foo[0].value = 'xyz' // Verify that this is what you wanted. new XmlNodePrinter(preserveWhitespace: true).print(config) -----Original Message----- From: Andrew Welch [mailto:] Sent: Monday, July 26, 2010 11:22 AM To: Richard Salz Cc: xml-dev Subject: Re: [xml-dev] hackable xml On 26 July 2010 13:53, Richard Salz <> wrote: > I don't get it -- which community needs this xml-like thing? And why? The community that just wants to read or write very simple xml files. Given: <config xmlns="http://somecomp.com"> <foo>abc</foo> </config> ...and you want to update the value of <foo>, how would you do it? Or put more realisticly, a colleague of yours knows very little about XML and all of its related technologies, and asks you how they should do it. - XSLT transform - XQuery update - JDOM, XOM etc - SAX parse and generate the events - some data-binding tool (if an xsd exists) All fairly straight forward for the xml community, but to anyone else each of those seem like a massive overkill for such a seemingly simple task. Perhaps there is a simple way that I've missed? The ultimate goal of hackable xml is to make it possible to just do a string replace of "<foo>abc</foo>" with "<foo>newValue</foo>" (which is often what happens anyway, causing many hours of fun) and then serialize/reparse without any issues. _______________________________________________________________________ XML-DEV is a publicly archived, unmoderated list hosted by OASIS to support XML implementation and development. To minimize spam in the archives, you must subscribe before posting. [Un]Subscribe/change address: http://www.oasis-open.org/mlmanage/ Or unsubscribe: subscribe: List archive: http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/ List Guidelines: http://www.oasis-open.org/maillists/guidelines.php
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