XML Validation with Python

[Will Stuyvesant]

> [Alan Kennedy]
> ... interesting links and comments ...
> Are you sure that XML validation-parsing is the right solution for
> your problem? There may be simpler ways.

We have defined a new XML vocabulary with a DTD.  I offered to make a
webservice so everybody can validate their XML files based on this
DTD.  For this I use CGI with Python 2.1.1 and I have no web master
privileges.

The idea of web applications is nice in that you do not have to code
GUIs anymore: you can do pretty much everything with (X)HTML. 
Sometimes you have to rethink your UI so it is possible to give every
user state a URI.  A big plus is that everybody can now use your
application.  And you can do more than I thought before, for example
users can send files from their computer with type=FILE fields in
forms.  And for development you can just download Apache and install
it on your laptop and configure it such that everything is exactly the
same as on the target website (#!/usr/bin/python...means install their
python version in C:\usr\bin on you laptop :-)

The big problem with web applications is all the permissions you need
to install, compile, configure, etc.  For Python CGI this means you
are stuck with some Python version and you realize how important the
Python Standard Library is.

-- 
Experience is what allows you to recognize a mistake the second time
you make it.