XOM API for Processing XML with Java

[Randall R Schulz <rschulz AT sonic.net>]

Elliotte,

On Tuesday 29 May 2007 18:17, Elliotte Harold wrote:
> Cass Costello wrote:
> > What are the disadvantages you see, Elliotte?
>
> Incompatibility with everyone still on 1.4 is the big problem.

Java 5 / 1.5 was released by Sun two years and eight months ago today. 
We're very far out from that release. Compatibility with 1.4 is a 
dinosaur problem, and it is highly dubious whether institutions that 
cannot find a way to migrate to 1.5 should dominate the decisions of 
library providers.


> It would also needlessly duplicate functionality in the API. In XOM
> there's exactly one way to do it, and Iterator isn't it. Use a
> NodeList.
>
> Finally, you'd have to figure out what to do about the remove()
> operation. I don't think there's a good answer for that. 

There's no obligation to implement remove(). You can throw an 
OperationNotSupportedException while remaining compliant with the API 
specification. See <http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/> for 
confirmation.


> XOM quite deliberately does not expose overly generic collections
> APIs that don't perfectly fit the problem space. I don't intend to
> start now.

Iteration over interior nodes does not "perfectly fit" an object model 
that is strictly tree structured? That's hard to accept or defend.


Randall Schulz