[Expat-discuss] DOM parser, expat vs. lbxml?

[Michael B. Allen]

On Tue, 4 Mar 2003 11:23:34 -0800 
AFish at GoldenGate.com wrote:

> We need a DOM parser in C

DOM is not a parser. Expat is a parser. The DOM is a tree of nodes in
memory. Frequently they do come with some kind of module to load and
store from and to XML however in which case it would *use* an XML
parser.

> that will compile on any platform. So far, the

"any platform"? You really should be a little more spcecific. You might
say POSIX or ANSI platform but "any" just isn't possible.

> only C xml parsers I have seen are expat and libxml. The only DOM parser

There are several XML parsers in C and particularly in C++. Use 'xml
parser c' on google. Xerces C++, IBM's xml4c, and Oracle XML for C are
three that I can think of.

> build on top of expat I have seen is 'SCEW' the simple C expat wrapper
> (http://www.nongnu.org/scew/).

This isn't a real DOM though.

> Questions:
> 1. Are there other expat wrappers or examples which provide DOM-like xml
> tree traversal?

There are lot's of these I suspect. And you could write your own in 20
mintues. Here's one:

  http://www.eskimo.com/~miallen/libmba/dl/docs/ref/domnode.html

> 2. Has anyone done a side-by-side libxml vs. expat comparison? Is there any

I have never really used libxml. I believe it requires glib. I would
be willing to bet expat would be quite a bit faster and much much more
effecient though.

> reason we should roll our own DOM parser on top of expat instead of using
> libxml?

There are a couple of other DOM implementations. If you need a real
DOM rather than a simple DOM-like interface like those mentioned above
there's is DOMC (by yours truely):

  http://www.eskimo.com/~miallen/domc/

Incedentally I just finished testing 0.7 but I have to run through the
portability tests and create the various packages so it will take me
another week or so. I have already compiled it on Windows NT and have
a working Win32 Makefile for MSVC (I'm not a Linux zealot!).

Mike

-- 
A  program should be written to model the concepts of the task it
performs rather than the physical world or a process because this
maximizes  the  potential  for it to be applied to tasks that are
conceptually  similar and, more important, to tasks that have not
yet been conceived.