XOM API for Processing XML with Java

[Stefan Matthias Aust <sma AT 3plus4.de>]

Just to give you different point of view...

Wolfgang Hoschek schrieb:

> RFE: Element.appendChild(String text) should return "this" for chaining.
>
> Knowing that some people feel strongly against chaining I'm not 
> promoting using chaining everywhere and inappropriately, but there is 
> one place where it would be very practical, as it arises very 
> frequently

Actually, I'm all for chaining (as this is something I really miss from 
Smalltalk :)  Originally, I wanted to use this to create a DOM:

 return new Template()
  .element("root").a("version", "1.0")
  .when("getItems")
    .element("items")
    .loop("getItems", "each")
      .element("item", new Var("each"))
    .end()
  .end()
  .instantiate(bean);

but then agreed to use a more conservative approach:

 Element e = a(element("root"), "version", "1.0");
 if (!getItems().isEmpty()) {
  Element e1 = element("items");
  for (Iterator i = getItems().iterator(); i.hasNext();) {
   append(e1, element("item", (String) i.next());
  }
 }
 return document(append(e, e1));

using some static factory methods to make element construction easier 
(actually, I've also a factory method for the for-loop):

 Element element(String name) {
  return new Element(name);
 }
 Element element(String name, String value) {
  return append(element(name), value);
 }
 Element a(Element e, String name, String value) {
  e.addAttribute(new Attribute(name, value));
  return e;
 }
 Element append(Element parent, Element child) {
  parent.appendChild(child);
  return parent;
 }
 Element append(Element parent, String text) {
  parent.appendChild(text);
  return parent;
 }

I'd love to use var-args for element construction

 Element element(String name, String... namesAndValues) {
  ...
 }

but I'm not yet on 1.5.

> [...]
> Do you immediately see what the code is about? Probably not.
> If Element.appendChild(String text) would return this one could write 
> this more understandably and consisely as follows.

IMHO the "chained" code is more readable.

However appending text nodes isn't such a big problem.  Dealing with 
attributes can be quite annoying as you need to put the Element you want 
to add an attribute into a variable because addAttribute also returns 
void.  A "withAttribute" method that returns the receiver might be handy.


bye
--
Stefan Matthias Aust // "Zweifel sind der Ansporn des Denkens..." -U