ANN: XMLFilter 1.1 - read and write XML with or without expat

Andrew Shearer awshearer@shearersoftware.com
15 Sep 2003 18:33:21 -0700


I just released version 1.1 of XMLFilter, which marks the first public
standalone release. XMLFilter is an open-source Python module you can
include with your programs to provide XML parsing even if the target
system lacks a working xml.sax package. For example, you can use it to
quickly adapt existing xml.sax-compatible scripts to work out of the
box on Jaguar (Mac OS X 10.2), which lacks expat.

http://www.shearersoftware.com/software/developers/xmlfilter/

It works by using the older xmllib module as a fallback for xml.sax. A
test suite verifies call-by-call compatibility no matter which module
ends up being used.

Other features include XML event-stream filtering, writing, and
creation, with support for writing CDATA sections. (Using these
classes also avoids bugs in some versions of xml.sax.)

Generally, the newer your version of Python, the faster it goes. For
example, if xml.sax and expat are working, they give a factor-of-3
speedup over the pure-Python xmllib, and on Python 2.3, Unicode
encoding conversions will use xmlcharrefreplace for faster writing of
XML numeric entities.

Python-licensed. Tested all the way down to Python 1.5.2 and up to
Python 2.3. xml.sax-compatible, Unicode-savvy (wherever Python is),
and optionally namespace-aware.

<P><A HREF="http://www.shearersoftware.com/software/developers/xmlfilter/">XMLFilter
1.0</a> -  Read, filter, and write XML with full compatibility for
systems lacking expat.  (15-Sep-03)

--
Andrew Shearer
http://www.shearersoftware.com/personal/weblog/