Re: [boost] [XML] Searching for an XML parsing library in boost

From: Stefan Seefeld (seefeld_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-02-28 11:52:07

Robert Ramey wrote:
> A while ago I made a suggestion about using the spirit parser with its 
> associated xml grammers.
> 
> No one has commented on this. 

I think I have. May be not explicitly, but my comments about XML not only
being about parsing was definitely directed at that suggestion. (And nobody
had any arguments against that...)

> I'm curious why this idea doesn't seem to be 
> attractive to anyone else..  I used it with very good results in the 
> serialization library.  It created a much more robust and maintainable 
> parser than I could have done by hand.  What am I missing here?

I agree, though that comparison only compares two alternatives
(roll-your-own vs. a spirit parser).
As I keep reiterating, though, an XML API is *much* more than
a parser. Even for XML streaming, you likely want to add support for
URL lookup (requiring some support for http and other protocols), and
possibly incremental validation.
And we haven't even talked about a DOM-like API yet. Yes, that could all
be built 'by hand' on top of existing libs (bgl ?), but there is enough
domain-specific stuff that would need to be added (XPath, say) that would
qualify such an approach as 'done by hand' much like what you criticise
above yourself.

One of the best (free, portable, efficient) XML libraries around these days is
libxml2. Having watched that evolve I can somewhat appreciate all the hard
work that went into that. I'm not foolish enough to want to start from scratch.

Regards,
                Stefan

-- 
      ...ich hab' noch einen Koffer in Berlin...