[Python-Dev] ElementTree in stdlib

[Fredrik Lundh]

Nick Coghlan wrote:

> > Having to define classes that conform to a certain API and registering
> > instances of those classes as callbacks with the parser doesn't look
> > that pythonic to me. An iterator API seems much more pythonic.
>
> If this is a comment on the ElementTree API, then /F must agree with you -
> iterparse was added to the API earlier this year. . .

When xml.sax was added to Python, the standard approach was to create
parsers that implemented the consumer pattern [1] and called methods
either on the parser class itself, or on a target object.  Examples include
sgmllib, htmllib/formatter, and xmllib.

After the discovery of efficient "pull parsing" patterns [2] and "using iterators
to invert program logic" patterns (see e.g. the "anonymous blocks" thread
from april this year [3], which generated a whole bunch of interesting PEPs),
things have changed a bit.

</F>

1) http://effbot.org/zone/consumer.htm

2) http://mail.python.org/pipermail/xml-sig/2000-May/002335.html

(Paul's xml.dom.pulldom module did make it into the standard library,
but it don't seem to be used much, for some unknown reason...)

3) http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-April/052753.html
(lots of interesting posts here)