[Htmlparser-developer] NodeIterator and SimpleNodeIterator

[Joseph R. <jmr...@tg...>]

After finding myself poking through more and more of the code for the 
HTML parser, and needing to fix bugs, I've decided to join this list. 
And I figure that there's no better way to join the list than with a 
question.  :-)  (I've looked through the archives, and I don't see the 
answer in there.  Sorry if this was discussed before and I missed it.)

Is there a reason that the iterators that Parser.elements() and 
CompositeTag.children() are different classes, and are incompatible?  I 
wanted to write some code along the lines of:

--------------------------------------------------------------

Parser parser = new Parser(url);
NodeIterator iter = parser.elements();
doParse(iter);

...

private void doParse(NodeIterator iter) {
   while(iter.hasMoreNodes()) {
     Node node = iter.nextNode();
     doStuff();
     if(node instanceof CompositeTag) {
       doParse(((CompositeTag)node).children());
     }
   }
}

--------------------------------------------------------------

Unfortunately, because the iterators are different (and don't even share 
a superclass), I can't do this, and have to duplicate my doParse method 
with two different signatures.

This seems like a natural thing to want to do.  For example, when 
parsing a page, a form tag might contain a lot of other elements (text, 
links, etc.) in it that we want to get, and the only way to do that is 
to iterate inside.

_____________________________________________________________
Joe Robins				Tel:   212-918-5057
Thaumaturgix, Inc.			Fax:   212-918-5001
19 W. 44th St., 18th Floor		Email: jmr...@tg...
New York, NY 10036			http://www.tgix.com

thau'ma-tur-gy, n. the working of miracles.