XOM API for Processing XML with Java

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

> Hi,
>
> Few more remarks on XOM 1.0d9 API:
>
> 1. What is the purpose of Element.getFirstChildElement methods now 
> that getNextSibling has been removed?

Mostly it's for the case where you want to get what is likely the 
only such child element without having to iterate though a list. e.g. 
given

<name><personal>Laurent</personal><family>Bihanic</family></name>

you can call name.getFirstChild("personal") to return the personal 
child element which may be the 1st or 2nd child element. I also 
considered getOnlyChildElement() here, and throwing an exception if 
there was more than one, but that seemed more complex, and not 
obvious that it really helped.

> 2. In the Javadoc of the Element class and of 
> Element.getNamespacePrefix, the description of the possible prefix 
> values is not clear. Cases where the prefix is null (no namespace?) 
> or an empty string (default namespace?) shall be detailed.

This is scheduled to be changed (and cleaned up) in the next release. 
It will return all prefixes locally declared on the element, both the 
element's own, the attributes' own, and any additional prefixes, 
after removing duplicates.

> 3. Constructors taking 3 arguments (local name, namespace prefix and 
> namespace URI) would be welcome for both Element and Attribute. I 
> encountered the case where I had to concatenate the prefix, ':' and 
> the actual name to invoke a constructor that performs the opposite 
> operation!

This one I don't see. It's too hard to remember whether the prefix or 
the local name comes first, and it doesn't provide any functionality 
you don't have already. The benefit just doesn't seem worth the 
complexity cost of the added methods.
--

+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo AT metalab.unc.edu | Writer/Programmer |
+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
|           Processing XML with Java (Addison-Wesley, 2002)          |
|              http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xmljava             |
| http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0201771861/cafeaulaitA  |
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