[XML-SIG] SAX2 and PyXML -- any actual complete implementations?

Mike Brown mike at skew.org
Thu Jun 1 22:56:39 CEST 2006


Henry S. Thompson wrote:
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> I've spent the last day exploring the state of 0.8.4 and SAX2, and as
> far as I can see the following is the case:
> 
>  * Only expat of the distributed SAX2 parsers supports start/endPrefixMapping
>  * Only expat of the distributed SAX2 parsers supports setDocumentLocator
> 
> Given that I need a validating parser, that's a bit unfortunate.
> 
> PyXML hasn't moved forward for some time -- is the energy for Python
> and XML going somewhere else, or does no-one care enough about
> validation. . .?

I think people do care about DTD-based validation...maybe not as much as they
used to, but it's still important. The momentum behind PyXML has indeed
stalled quite a bit, though, as demonstrated by the fact that no one responded 
to your post before now.

> Not a criticism, a genuine request for information.  I am prepared to
> look at either
> 
>  1) Building a validator on top of expat;
>  2) Adding support for start/endPrefixMapping and (easy)
>     setDocumentLocator to SAX2/xmlproc.
> 
> if there's really nothing else out there.

Expat 2.0.0, released in January, supports validation. I don't know if it is
going to be included in Python 2.5.  According to PEP 356, it's on the
"Possible features" list and a patch has been submitted, and personally I
think it'd be a good idea to include it. It would save you a lot of work.

4Suite already uses Expat 2.0.0 and supports validation with it.
setDocumentLocator and start/endPrefixMapping are supported.
See http://4suite.org/docs/CoreManual.xml#saxlette for general info,
and http://skew.org/~mike/4suite-docs/html/modules/Ft.Xml.Sax.html
(not-so-temporary temporary location) for generated API docs.

Mike


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