Clean way to process XML

Hello Squeakers!

I am trying to implement XML based protocol in Squeak.

And was wondering how to do it cleanly in Smalltalk.

My take is to write general DSL (something like DTD, but bit more powerfull with
types) for this that whould generate classes which object fields whould be maped
to object instance variables. This way I could have protocol objects as native
Smalltalk objects.

But I am not shore if this is the best solution. Maybe there is one (by googling
I didn't find anything)? Or how a real smalltalker whould tackle this?

Hi Ramunas,

On 11/26/06, Ramūnas Gutkovas <[hidden email]> wrote:
> My take is to write general DSL (something like DTD, but bit more powerfull with
> types) for this that whould generate classes which object fields whould be maped
> to object instance variables. This way I could have protocol objects as native
> Smalltalk objects.

so, basically, you intend to implement an XML data binding for your
protocol, to have the protocol available in the more convenient form
of Smalltalk objects, right? That's reasonable and frequently done.

A word about DTDs: those are pretty outdated; DTDs have essentially
been replaced by XSchema definitions. XSchema is far more convenient.

> But I am not shore if this is the best solution. Maybe there is one (by googling
> I didn't find anything)? Or how a real smalltalker whould tackle this?

As I said, establishing an XML data binding is a reasonable approach.
In Squeak, you can use the YAXO package to have an XML parser.

Hope this helps,

Michael

Michael Haupt <mhaupt <at> gmail.com> writes:

> so, basically, you intend to implement an XML data binding for your
> protocol, to have the protocol available in the more convenient form
> of Smalltalk objects, right? That's reasonable and frequently done.

Yes. Sorry not being clear, my english is a bit rusty :)

> A word about DTDs: those are pretty outdated; DTDs have essentially
> been replaced by XSchema definitions. XSchema is far more convenient.

The protocol is given by a set of DTD's. I don't know about convinience all of
XML is quite painfull (and it was made to be simple, the irony) ;)

> As I said, establishing an XML data binding is a reasonable approach.
> In Squeak, you can use the YAXO package to have an XML parser.

Yes I am already using YAXO, I have implemented WBXML as SAXDriver for it. But
working on a raw DOM tree is not convinient at all.

Other day I was looking at Magritte I think it could suit the task. Declarative
model with types, validation, automatic accessor generation etc. - very nice.
All I have to do is to write DOM -> Magritte -> DOM. Oh, well back to work :)

> Hope this helps,

All the help is appreciated!

> Michael