XOM API for Processing XML with Java

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

At 10:29 AM -0400 6/18/03, Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote:

> Attributes are tricky. I can't really allow an Attribute to replace 
> an Element without extra instanceof tests that are insanely 
> expensive.

Now that I've removed all instanceof tests from the nu.xom package, 
this might be fast enough to consider. I'll need to test it.

> Plus returning the attribute instead of an element, it would be very 
> tricky to figure out the appropriate value of the attribute. I guess 
> the factory would have to hang on to a reference to the Attribute 
> object, and then accumulate text until it saw the end of the 
> element, and then set the value. Messy, but doable.

Maybe this isn't so bad. If startMakingElement returns an Attribute, 
then the attribute is added to the parent and the rest of the content 
is added to the parent as well. If finishMakingElement returns an 
Attribute, then the attribute is added to the parent and the rest of 
the content is deleted. In both cases this is similar to returning 
null.

In all cases, there'd have to be the possibility of an exception if 
you returned something that just couldn't work (e.g. a text node in 
the prolog) but maybe that's OK. I'm not convinced this is a common 
need, but if it could be easily enabled without complexifying or 
slowing down the API, then it might be a nice feature to have.
--

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