XOM API for Processing XML with Java

[Luca Passani <passani AT eunet.no>]

I think we agree. The problem was my misunderstanding/ignorance of how 
parser works. For some reason which I never quite understood, XML keeps 
surprising me after all these years. Not referring to this case 
specifically, but every time I think I have understood the XML basics, 
something weird will come up and show me that I had not understood 
properly. Not really the "simple" standard it was supposed to be, but I 
don't want to digress, since it was my error.

Thanks

Luca

Benson Margulies wrote:
> Luca, 
>
> Nothing in the XML standard has changed since 2002. The XML standard always
> stated very clearly how entities work. The fact that XML parsers have become
> progressively more capable of implementing the standard is another story.
>
> The rule is really simple. If you want to put a string into XML, you have to
> escape & and < as &amp; and &lt; In PCDATA, you can use CDATA. In attribute
> values, it's the &-entities, period.
>
> Plain old XML doesn't know what &euro; is unless you tell it so with an
> entity definition. If your data has &euro; in it (perhaps it's HTML you are
> carting around in XML) then, sure enough, &amp;euro; is what you would write
> in the xml file. And out of a parser API will come "&euro;".
>
>
>
> On 1/13/09 6:49 PM, "Luca Passani" <passani AT eunet.no> wrote:
>
>   
> > Michael Kay wrote:
> >     
> > > You can write it as &amp;euro; if you really want to. But why on earth would
> > > you want to use something that looks just like an entity reference but isn't
> > > one? 
> > >   
> > >       
> > because, in this framework (WURFL), an XML file is the core of a simple
> > DB to store strings. Usually those strings are not entities, but
> > yesterday I happened to need to store a string which looked identical to
> > an XML entity.
> >
> >     
> > > Every technology sucks if you misuse it.
> > >       
> > what should I have done in 2002 when I started the project? decide that
> > XML was not good for me because maybe one day this XML file may have to
> > contain a string which could be confused with an XML entity?
> >
> >
> >     
> > > I've got a brand new digital camera
> > > and it's no good at hammering nails. Perhaps the problem is with the user,
> > > not with the technology?
> > >       
> > WURFL is a very successful project in its field. Thousands of developers
> > around the planet have been able to download it and use it out of the
> > box without much trouble. Anyway, the problem is solved. I now know how
> > to escape those "things". I always knew that &amp; escapes &, but for
> > some reason I was assuming that the XML parser would return "&amp;euro;"
> > as "&amp;euro;" (and not as "&euro;" which is what I want).
> > Please observe that declaring the entity is not possible, because the
> > WURFL model is such that a developer can throw any kind of property
> > inside WURFL without changing anything else, and legitimately expect to
> > find it at a later stage.
> >
> > Thank you for your interest in the problem.
> >
> > Luca
> >
> >     
>
>
>