Creating referenceable objects from XML

[Alan Kennedy]

[Michael Williams]
> I need it to somehow convert my XML to intuitively referenceable  
> object.  Any ideas?  I could even do it myself if I knew the  mechanism 
> by which python classes do this (create variables on the fly).

You seem to already have a fair idea what kind of model you need, and to 
know that there is a simple way for you to create one. I encourage you 
to progress on this path: it will increase the depth of your understanding.

One mistake I think that some people make about XML is relying on other 
peoples interpretations of the subject, rather than forming their own 
opinions.

The multitude of document models provided by everyone and his mother all 
make assumptions about how the components of the model will be accessed, 
in what order those components will be accessed, how often and when, how 
memory efficient the model is, etc, etc.

To really understand the trade-offs and strengths of all the different 
models, it is a good exercise to build your own object model. It's a 
simple exercise, due to pythons highly dynamic nature. Understanding 
your own model will help you understand what the other models do and do 
not provide. You can then evaluate other off-the-shelf models for your 
specific applications: I always find different XML tools suit different 
situations.

See this post of mine from a couple years back about different ways of 
building your own document/data models.

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/msg/e2a4a1c35395ffec

I think the reference to the ActiveState recipe will be of particular 
interest, since you could have a running example very quickly indeed.

See also my tutorial post on extracting document content from a SAX 
stream. I gave the example of a simple stack-based xpath-style 
expression matcher.

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/msg/6853bddbb9326948

Also contained in that thread is an illuminating and productive 
discussion between the effbot and myself about how wonderfully simple 
ElementTree makes this, not to mention unbeatably efficient.

this-week-i-ave-been-mostly-using-kid-for-templating-ly'yrs,

-- 
alan kennedy
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email alan:              http://xhaus.com/contact/alan