Re: [boost] [GSOC] XML library of Boost

Subject: Re: [boost] [GSOC] XML library of Boost
From: Andrey Semashev (andrey.semashev_at_[hidden])
Date: 2013-04-28 15:11:17

On Monday 29 April 2013 02:08:01 Amos Ji wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> I'm a graduate student from Fudan University in China. And I hope to
> contribute some code to Boost during the GSOC.
> 
> I've scanned the idea page. The ideas in the page are all very interesting
> and challenging. But what I'm interested in most is XML library, which is
> at the bottom of page. I think the XML format is the most popular standard
> for storing information so it's important for Boost to have a good XML
> library.

Agreed, a good and fast XML library would be most useful.

> In my opinion, an XML parser must be able to do these things:
> 
>    1. To Iterate over DOM nodes tree;
>    2. To access the values of nodes and their attributes quickly;
>    3. To insert or delete nodes or attribute of an exact node easily;
>    4. To generate new XML from the structure which stores XML in the
>    library.

IMHO, support for SAX is also mandatory. I would even say that SAX should be 
the first and the primary thing to be implemented in Boost.XML, as DOM can be 
added later on top of it if the time for GSOC allows.

You also listed support for encodings in the optional features. I agree with 
it being optional with exception for Unicode. At least UTF-8 should be 
supported from the very start. But that should not be a problem now that we 
have Boost.Locale.