[libxml++] node iterators

[Christophe de V. <cde...@al...>]

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Hi,

I'd like to discuss the subject of iterators inside libxml++.

We did already several month ago but this did not went to any=20
conclusion/decision.

To illustrate how I would see things, I made a small patch which implements=
 a=20
class NodeIterator, which permit to iterate through the children of a node.
I think it implements correctly the following concept from STL:
=2D - Bidirectionnal Iterator.
=2D - Input Iterator.

It's quite trivial to use. Exemple to iterate a complete tree:

void do_something(xmlpp::Node & node) {

	for( xmlpp::NodeIterator i =3D node.children_node(),
		i_end =3D xmlpp::NodeIterator();
		i !=3D i_end;
		++i)
	{
		std::cout << i->get_name() << std::endl;
		do_something(*i);
	}

};

One interesting thing is that is nodes are added/removed at the same tree=20
level, the iterator will stay valid (unless we suppress the pointed node of=
=20
course).

A const iterator is needed, but I did not do it yet.

I'd like to have comments/suggestions at least on:
 - Does this iterator have the behavior any C++ developer would expect ?
 - The class name. Should it be Node::iterator ? I'm not sure about that si=
nce=20
it would suggest Node is a container, which is not right I think.
 - Does Node::children_begin() sounds right ? It seems to me that yes.

 - Should we drop Node::get_children ? simply keep it ?
 - Should we wait for the next major version to add this feature ?



The patch (which concerns only the 'nodes' directory) also includes a littl=
e=20
change : it uses pimpl idiom so that no libxml header is included by the=20
libxml++ user.=20
I think it would be a good thing to do this for the whole library, and it's=
=20
not much work. What do you think about it ?

Comments welcome


Cheers

Christophe
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