[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] SAX: Parser Interface -- Summary of Change Requests
As promised, I will now begin to summarise the requested changes to SAX before we put out a stable 1.0 version: over the next few days, I will send out one message summarising the requested changes to each interface or class. For more information on SAX, see http://www.microstar.com/XML/SAX/ There have been only two changes proposed to the Parser interface, both of which would be backwards-compatible with existing implementations: 1) Allow SAX to work with an input stream as well as a URI. 2) Simplify handler chaining by adding get* methods for existing handlers. Here are the change requests in detail, with my initial response at the end of each one: 1) Allow SAX to work with an input stream as well as a URI. - Paul Pazandak <pazandak@O...> - Peter Murray-Rust <peter@u...> - Don Park <donpark@q...> Currently, the Parser interface provides only the following method to initiate a parse: void parse (String publicId, String systemId) throws java.lang.Exception; Following this suggestion, there would be a new method void parse (String publicId, String systemId, InputStream input) throws java.lang.Exception; (It is still necessary to provide a system identifier for resolving relative URIs within the stream). Note that the stream would be a byte stream, not a character stream -- characters might require more than one octet, depending on the encoding in use. I can see the convenience of this method, and I plan to add something like this to AElfred when I have a chance. For SAX, however -- which is meant to end up as a language- and system-independent API -- I am reluctant to hardcode assumptions about storage (and I don't know enough about IDL to know if there is a general representation for streams). Paul Pazandak has also suggested allowing strings and buffers -- in this case, they would already be decoded into characters. Personally, I'm undecided, and would be interested in hearing the theoretical arguments for and against this suggestion. 2) Simplify handler chaining by adding get* methods for existing handlers. - Don Park <donpark@q...> Currently the Parser interface provides only setters for the various handlers: public void setEntityHandler (EntityHandler handler); public void setDocumentHandler (DocumentHandler handler); public void setErrorHandler (ErrorHandler handler); Following this suggestions, there would also be accessors: public EntityHandler getEntityHandler (); public DocumentHandler getDocumentHandler (); public ErrorHandler getErrorHandler (); An application could then retrieve the existing handler and implement a new one which invokes the old one under certain circumstances. This seems like a generally good idea (as will as a simple and backwards-compatible change), and I am willing to implement it. The only complication is that we'll have to define the default state -- is the parser always required to return a default handler if the user has not explicitly set one, or should it return null? I look forward to your comments and suggestions. All the best, David -- David Megginson ak117@f... Microstar Software Ltd. dmeggins@m... http://home.sprynet.com/sprynet/dmeggins/ xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@i... Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; (un)subscribe xml-dev To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; subscribe xml-dev-digest List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@i...)
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