XOM API for Processing XML with Java

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

Peter Murray-Rust wrote:
> My questions include:
>
> * is it a good idea to subclass Document to CMLDocument? (I had to do
> this for W3C as it was the only way to to create subclasses). 
>   

It's not really necessary. You might do it if it helped you distinguish 
your CML documents from all others, or if you wanted to guarantee 
somehow that CML documents only contained the proper root element. 
However, that's stretching a bit.

> * What is the role of a Document (it is much less central than in W3C).
> Obviously it holds the prolog, etc. I note that it cannot be detached
> from its rootElement. (I sometimes need to replace a rootElement with
> its child, and this seems to be forbidden without copying the tree.
>   

It's the root node, nothing more. It's like the root node in XPath 
(except that it can have a DocType child.)

> * Is is possible to serialize a Node other than document without making
> a copy?
>   

Not directly, but you can subclass serializer to expose some protected 
methods as Wolfgang said. Use cases might convince me to make some more 
methods public.

> * Is there a simple way to run schematron from within XOM? I can build
> up the XSLT transform, but wonder if there is something prettier.
>   

No. You'd pretty much have to go the XSLT route.

> * is there every likely to be support for W3C dataTypes in XOM. At
> present I create my own subclasses (e.g. Integer, IntegerList, etc).
>
>   

Probably not. The added API complexity would be prohibitive. Not to 
mention that SAX doesn't expose schema types for XOM to use when building.


--
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo AT metalab.unc.edu
XML in a Nutshell 3rd Edition Just Published!
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