[XML-SIG] Which DOM implementation?

[Andrew Clover]

Derek Fountain <derekfountain at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> http://pyxml.sourceforge.net/topics/compliance.html

> is making things less clear instead of more so!

Sorry about that. It was compiled as a guide to what areas to avoid when 
using the Python DOMs, rather than a comparison table as such.

> The table suggests there are two minidom implementations: one in the Python 
> package itself, and one in the PyXML package.

Sort of. They're the result of same development process though. minidom 
is developed in PyXML, and a snapshot is copied into the Python tree 
every so often. The versions distributed with Python don't always seem 
to correspond with exactly one release of PyXML, so I grouped them 
separately.

> It looks like the PyXML version is a little more compliant - is that a
> fair assessment?

Only because the PyXML trunk is generally at a later stage of 
development than the Python branch. For example, the minidom for Python 
2.3 was, IIRC, taken between the 0.8.2 and 0.8.3 PyXML versions, so its 
behaviour is very similar to the latest PyXML version.

> Was [4DOM] donated to the PyXML project by FourThought?

Yes.

> Finally, 4Suite appears to have 3 DOM packages available, none of which 
> appears to be especially compliant. I was under the impression that cDomlette 
> was built with speed in mind. I'm not sure about pDOM and FtMD.

pDomlette (or FtMiniDom in later versions) is built for compatibility 
with cDomlette, as a backup for when the C extension isn't available. 
It's not really an implementation you'd target in its own right.

> Which Python based DOM implementation is the best in terms of compliance to
> the W3C specification?

I would naturally plug my own. ;-)

(Speaking of which, pxdom 1.1 will be out this week. It's got external 
entities and everything. How exciting. If you like that kind of thing.)

-- 
Andrew Clover
mailto:and at doxdesk.com
http://www.doxdesk.com/