[boost] Proposal: XML APIs in boost

From: Stefan Seefeld (seefeld_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-10-31 22:44:20

Some years ago I proposed a XML-related APIs for inclusion
into boost (http://lists.boost.org/Archives/boost/2003/06/48955.php).
Everybody agreed that such APIs would be very useful as part of boost.
Unfortunately, though, after some weeks of discussing a number of details,
I got distracted, and so I never managed to submit an enhancement.

I'v now started to look into this topic again, and wrote down a start
of a DOM-like API as I believe would be suitable for boost.

Here are some highlights:

* User access dom nodes as <>_ptr objects. All memory management is
   hidden, and only requires the document itself to be managed.

* The API is modular to allow incremental addition of new modules with
   minimal impact on existing ones. This implies that implementations
   may only support a subset of the API. (For example, no validation.)

* All classes are parametrized around the (unicode) string type, so
   the code can be bound to arbitrary unicode libraries, or even std::string,
   if all potential input will be ASCII only.

* The Implementation uses existing libraries (libxml2, to be specific),
   since writing a XML DOM library requires substantial efford.

A first sketch at a XML API is submitted to the boost file vault under
the 'Programming Interfaces' category. It contains demo code, as well
as some auto-generated documentation.

I'm aware that this requires some more work before I can attempt
a formal submission. This is simply to see whether there is still
any interest into such an API, and to get some discussion on the
design.

Regards,
                Stefan