Re: [Simple-support] Simple XML framework can't handle foreign markup in Strings - forced use of CDATA

[Niall G. <gal...@ya...>]

Hi Jens,
 
 
I think you are confused here about what Simple is doing. Simple is an XML framework, it deals with XML only. Also, Simple does not parse any XML, it delegates this to thirdparty libraries such as StAX, W3C DOM, and KXML depending on the platform its running on. These parsers are standardised, they are correct in their use of XML. I have introduced no special cases here.
 
Niall

--- On Thu, 23/6/11, Stumpf, Jens Thorsten <Tho...@st...> wrote:


From: Stumpf, Jens Thorsten <Tho...@st...>
Subject: [Simple-support] Simple XML framework can't handle foreign markup in Strings - forced use of CDATA
To: sim...@li...
Received: Thursday, 23 June, 2011, 11:16 AM






Hi!
 
I’m quite disappointed:
 
Simple XML framework forces the usage of superfluous CDATA-blocks.
 
On unserialising XML-Files with elements containing markup, e.g. HTML, Simple XML framework transforms the HTML to pure text discarding all mark up:
 
      <description id="eid-191" composed="0">
        <div>
          <p>The quick brown <a href=”www.example.com/fox”>fox</a>.</p>
        </div>
      </description>
and 
      @Element
      String description;
 
yields description to contain “The quick brown fox” but not 
        <div>
          <p>The quick brown <a href=”www.example.com/fox”>fox</a>.</p>
        </div>
 
This is crippling the provided data, undocumented and most probably unnecessary.
 
The only way to get around it is to use CDATA blocks which is error prone and evil:
 
Every additional CDATA-block bloats the XML files. Every CDATA block renders substructures invalidateable. Every CDATA block makes the generated *and* read data less suitable for true XML chains.
 
CDATA is *only* recommendable if the substructure is not valid itself.
The classes exactly define the parts which should be read into attributes so there is no need to cripple the contained data.
It is a fairly common use case of XML based markup languages to contain foreign other markup languages and it is not sensible to have to implement the whole set of elements of these.
It is highly undesirable to be forced to try to sidestep existing standards fixed in published RFCs.
 
Additionally obviously Simple XML framework shall not alter the content of an element if there isn’t a provided method (without a warning). To alter the content somehow breaches the essential rules of object orientation.
The mixed content of an element annotated as element of type string e.g. can and should always simply be stored as String containing the markup elements.
If the library is decent it might though integrate an optional switch to do so or code to get rid of the putatively superfluous child nodes.
 
To preserve a reasonable XML chain and gain valid XML only such texts should have to be contained in a CDATA block which contain not well formed data. This is a sensible usage for CDATA.
The decision to insert the data as CDATA might even be deferred till runtime.
 
Usage should be transparent and painless for the developer and an alternative provider of XML data.
There has to be an option (annotation) to enabling an developer to keep the markup without bloating the code at least.
As said before it’s much more preferable to conserve per default contents of String elements as provided.
 
For example I need the contained HTML mark up (see above) but I can’t alter the provider.
 
I’m looking forward for an answer – but according to my experiences before I unfortunately think nobody will reply at all so this might just end up as being a warning for other developers…
 
Jens
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