ANN: Amara XML Toolkit 1.0b3

[Uche Ogbuji]

ANN: Amara XML Toolkit 1.0b3

http://uche.ogbuji.net/tech/4Suite/amara
ftp://ftp.4suite.org/pub/Amara/

Changes in this release:

* Add xml_set_attribute method to elements, in order to allow adding
  attributes with namespaces or with illegal Python names
* Update manual source for markdown, and extensive improvements to the
  manual (with much help from Jamie Norrish)
* Add xml_doc facility for nodes [1]
* Fix support for output parameters in xml()
* Add support for rules to pushbind
* Improve XSLT support for bindery objects (see demo/bindery/xslt.py)
* Bug fixes

[1] http://lists.fourthought.com/pipermail/4suite/2005-June/013671.html

Amara XML Toolkit is a collection of Python tools for XML processing--
not just tools that happen to be written in Python, but tools built from
the ground up to use Python idioms and take advantage of the many
advantages of Python.

Amara builds on 4Suite [http://4Suite.org], but whereas 4Suite focuses
more on literal implementation of XML standards in Python, Amara
focuses on Pythonic idiom.  It provides tools you can trust to conform
with XML standards without losing the familiar Python feel.

The components of Amara are:

* Bindery: data binding tool (a very Pythonic XML API)
* Scimitar: implementation of the ISO Schematron schema language for
            XML; converts Schematron files to Python scripts
* domtools: set of tools to augment Python DOMs
* saxtools: set of tools to make SAX easier to use in Python
* Flextyper: user-defined datatypes in Python for XML processing

There's a lot in Amara, but here are highlights:

Amara Bindery: XML as easy as py
--------------------------------

Bindery turns an XML document into a tree of Python objects
corresponding to
the vocabulary used in the XML document, for maximum clarity.  For
example,
the document 

<monty>
  <python spam="eggs">What do you mean "bleh"</python>
  <python ministry="abuse">But I was looking for argument</python>
</monty>

Becomes a data structure such that you can write

binding.monty.python.spam

In order to get the value "eggs" or

binding.monty.python[1]

In order to get the value "But I was looking for argument".

There are other such tools for Python, and what makes Anobind unique is
that it's driven by a very declarative rules-based system for binding
XML to the Python data.  You can register rules that are triggered by
XPattern expressions specialized binding behavior.  It includes XPath
support and supports mutation.  Bindery is very efficient, using SAX
to generate bindings.

Scimitar: Schematron for Pytthon
--------------------------------

Merged in from a separate project, Scimitar is an implementation of ISO
Schematron that compiles a Schematron schema into a Python validator
script.

You typically use scimitar in two phases.  Say you have a schematron
schema schema1.stron and you want to validate multiple XML files
against it, instance1.xml, instance2.xml, instance3.xml.

First you run schema1.stron through the scimitar compiler script,
scimitar.py:

scimitar.py schema1.stron

The generated file, schema1.py, can be used to validate XML instances:

python schema1.py instance1.xml

Which emits a validation report.

Amara DOM Tools: giving DOM a more Pythonic face
------------------------------------------------

DOM came from the Java world, hardly the most Pythonic API possible.
Some DOM-like implementations such as 4Suite's Domlettes mix in some
Pythonic idiom. Amara DOM Tools goes even further.

Amara DOM Tools feature pushdom, similar to xml.dom.pulldom, but
easier to use.  It also includes Python generator-based tools for
DOM processing, and a function to return an XPath location for
any DOM node.

Amara SAX Tools: SAX without the brain explosion
------------------------------------------------

Tenorsax (amara.saxtools.tenorsax) is a framework for "linerarizing" SAX
logic so that it flows more naturally, and needs a lot less state
machine wizardry.

License
-------

Amara is open source, provided under the 4Suite variant of the Apache
license.  See the file COPYING for details.

Installation
------------

Amara requires Python 2.3 or more recent and 4Suite 1.0b1 or more
recent.  Make sure these are installed, unpack Amara to a convenient
location and run

python setup.py install


-- 
Uche Ogbuji                               Fourthought, Inc.
http://uche.ogbuji.net                    http://fourthought.com
http://copia.ogbuji.net                   http://4Suite.org
Use CSS to display XML, part 2 - http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/edu/x-dw-x-xmlcss2-i.html
XML Output with 4Suite & Amara - http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2005/04/20/py-xml.html
Use XSLT to prepare XML for import into OpenOffice Calc - http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-oocalc/
Schema standardization for top-down semantic transparency - http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-think31.html