XOM API for Processing XML with Java

[Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo AT metalab.unc.edu>]

One other big difference I noticed, though only by browsing the 
source code, so I could be wrong. Sparta seems to make no effort to 
make sure its data is well-formed. For instance here's the Element 
constructor:



    public Element(String tagName)
    {
        tagName_ = tagName;
    }


It appears that any string at all can be used to set the element, 
including strings that contain spaces, tabs, nulls, vertical tabs, 
unmatched halves of surrogate pairs, and more.

Similarly, the setAttribute method isn't checking attribute names or values:


    public void setAttribute(String name, String value){
        if( attributes_.get(name)==null )
            attributeNames_.addElement(name);
        attributes_.put(name,value);
        notifyObservers();
    }

The Text class also seems to be allowing anything, well-formed or not:

    public Text(String data)
    {
        text_ = new StringBuffer(data);
    }

XOM is fanatical about enforcing well-formedness. Sparta appears to 
be ignoring that issue completely, and relying on the client 
programmer to know, remember, and follow all the well-formedness 
rules of XML.


--

+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo AT metalab.unc.edu | Writer/Programmer |
+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
|          XML in a  Nutshell, 2nd Edition (O'Reilly, 2002)          |
|              http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xian2/              |
|  http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0596002920/cafeaulaitA/  |
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|  Read Cafe con Leche for XML News: http://www.cafeconleche.org/    |
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