pyXML beginner questions

[Andrew Clover]

Sebastian Fey <fey at parsytec.de> wrote:

> actually, is nodetype entityReference implemented in pyXML.

Yes, but you won't ever see them from a parse operation.

Print() will happily serialise an entity reference as &e; providing you
can get one into the document in the first place. Using
Document.createEntityReference() is the only way I know.

> (2) id also like to load external parsed entities referenced in the xml. 
> MSXML provides an extension(?) to DOM which returns the uri to an 
> entityReference-NODE. any similar in pyXML.

The standard DOM way of doing it is to use the DocumentType.entities
interface:

  doctype= entref.ownerDocument.doctype
  entdecl= doctype.entities.getNamedItem(entref.nodeName)
  uri= entdecl.systemId  # see also baseURI if using DOM Level 3 Core

This isn't any use for 4DOM as you won't get any Entity objects from its
parse stage and you can't create your own.

In DOM Level 3 Load/Save, control of whether Entity and EntityReference
objects are kept in the document is achieved with the DOMConfiguration
parameter 'entities':

  parser= implementation.createLSParser(1, None)
  parser.domConfig.setParameter('entities', True)  # False by default
  doc= parser.parseURI('file:///in.xml')
  serialiser= implementation.createLSSerializer()
  serialiser.domConfig.setParameter('entities', True)
  serialiser.writeToURI(doc, 'file:///out.xml')

DOM 3 LS is still at Proposed Recommendation stage and isn't supported
by 4DOM yet. (Insert customary pxdom plug here.)

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