SAX and DOM are the ruling pair of XML processing APIs. The choice developers generally know best are between the standard model of SAX (push events from the parser to a detached handler) and DOM (parse the document into a tree of readily-accessible objects). SAX generally offers better performance on sizeable documents and DOM generally offers more straightforward code. SAX was designed for the Java language, although bindings to other languages have been developed. In these other languages, however, the Java heritage of SAX generally shows through and many of the strengths of the language being used are forfeit. DOM was designed to be as language-neutral as possible, specified in ISO Interface Definition Language (IDL); standard bindings exist for the Java language and ECMAScript (JavaScript), but these still reflect the language-neutral constructs of the IDL, and all the language bindings, official or unofficial, again forfeit some strengths of the host language.
To better take advantage of core language strengths, various developers have developed XML processing APIs that are native to particular languages. Almost all well-known languages have one or more toolkits offering such an API. For some time, the conventional wisdom has been that it's best to stick to SAX and DOM for maximum portability, but experience has convinced me that this is more often than not an overstated consideration. For one thing, because the language bindings for SAX and DOM have some deviations, code is rarely truly portable across languages; the work needed to adapt the code from one language to another is still considerable. Using SAX and DOM usually does improve portability between implementations in the same language, but this has to be traded off against the fact that the programmer often loses productivity by forfeiting some language strengths.
One area where developers in several languages independently made early explorations is in the pull DOM, a system that wraps SAX so that one can pull events from the parser rather than having it pushed. This adjustment generally allows for more straightforward code, and implementations usually use native language constructs to a greater extent than pure SAX or DOM. Java Specification Requests (JSR #173) for Streaming API for XML (StAX) is a Java API for pull-parsing XML. Other pull APIs include libxml2's xmlTextReader for C, C++, Python, Perl, and many other languages that have libxml2 wrappers. Python comes with a
xml.dm.pulldom
module, which offers a pull API.
Marshallers and XML data structures
Another early convention apart from SAX and DOM was developing tools that turn XML into generic data structures native to the language -- a process called unmarshalling -- and vice versa (marshalling). The idea is to make developers in a specific language feel at home and not have to really think about the XML behind the data. Unfortunately, many developers are hostile to XML and this is often the only way they can find it palatable. But even for those who are comfortable with XML, marshalling tools are useful for quick and dirty processing: JDOM is a DOM-like API that sticks strictly to Java-language idioms; Python users have ElementTree, which creates a specialized data structure from XML, focusing on elements; Perl users have the now rather dated XML::Grove, which interchanges parsed XML, HTML, or SGML with a tree of Perl hashes; Ruby users have XMLification for very simple translation of Ruby objects to XML; an option for PHP is class_path_parser.php, which allows you to register XPath-like expressions for an XML source and dispatches PHP handler functions accordingly; an option for Haskell is Haskell2Xml, which allows you to read and write ordinary Haskell data as XML documents.
A twist on marshalling that is emerging as a popular option is to use XML schema languages and other such sources to create data structures in the native language that use the vocabulary expressed in the XML document. Such systems are called XML data bindings, and in many cases they lead to the most natural possible manipulation of XML. Java technology users can look to JSR #31, "XML Data Binding Specification". The Castor, JBind, and JiBX tools have some similar features to JAXB. Python users have Anobind, gnosis.xml.objectify, and xmltramp, which operate from direct inspection of the source XML, and generateDS.py, which uses a W3C XML Schema to drive the binding. An option for Perl is XML::Smart.
So regardless of which language you prefer, you have many options for processing XML. Don't be afraid to put aside conventional wisdom and look for options besides the ruling pair.
- Check out JSR #173, a pull API for the Java language. You can also learn more about StAX in Berthold Daum's series of developerWorks tips:
- "Parsing XML documents partially with StAX" (December 2003)
- "Screen XML documents efficiently with StAX" (December 2003)
- "Write XML documents with StAX " (December 2003)
- "Merge XML documents with StAX " (January 2004)
- Learn about Libxml2's XmlTextReader Interface, a pull API for C, C++, Perl, Python, and other languages.
- Try xml.dom.pulldom, a Python library for pull processing.
- For a Perl data structure for XML, SGML, and HTML, take a look at XML::Grove.
- Translate Ruby objects into XML using XMLification.
- Work with class_path_parser.php to dispatch PHP functions against XML.
- Visit The HaXml project . It includes Haskell2Xml, which interchanges XML with ordinary Haskell objects.
- Try JDOM, a Java-centric DOM variation.
- Dennis M. Sosnoski offers good coverage of Java data binding tools in his developerWorks series on data binding:
- Part 1: "Code generation approaches -- JAXB and more" (January 2003)
- Part 2: "Performance" (January 2003)
- Part 3: "JiBX architecture" (April 2003)
- Part 4: "JiBX Usage" (April 2003)
- Look into ElementTree, an easy-to-use Python data structure representing XML documents.
-
Anobind, gnosis.xml.objectify, and xmltramp are basic Python data binding tools. generateDS.py uses W3C XML Schema. For more on gnosis.xml.objectify, check out David Mertz's
XML Matters
column here on developerWorks.
- Need a data binding for Perl? Try XML::Smart.
- Find a broad array of articles, columns, tutorials, and tips on these two popular technologies at the developerWorks
Web services and XML content areas. For a complete list of XML tips to date, check out the tips summary page.
- Learn how you can become an IBM Certified Developer in XML and related technologies.
Uche Ogbuji is a consultant and co-founder of Fourthought Inc., a software vendor and consultancy specializing in XML solutions for enterprise knowledge management. Fourthought develops 4Suite, an open source platform for XML, RDF, and knowledge-management applications. Mr. Ogbuji is a computer engineer and writer born in Nigeria, living and working in Boulder, Colorado, USA. You can contact Mr. Ogbuji at uche@ogbuji.net.
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