[MTOS-dev] XML parsing

[Bruce]

You guys just love to make things complicated.
Use php5 :)
simplexml even has namespaces, too simple maybe.

Bruce
bkdesign
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mark Paschal" <mark at sixapart.com>
To: <mtos-dev at sixapart.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 05, 2008 12:53 PM
Subject: [MTOS-dev] XML parsing


> Hi, mtos-dev folks,
> 
> I told Tim a while ago I would start a thread about XML parsing in MT, 
> so I'll take the current quietude as an opportunity to do so.
> 
> While we don't parse XML in any of the core functions, we do in:
> 
> * the Atompub server(s)
> * profile exchange for OpenID commenters
> 
> Given our general product requirements and that the larger Perl 
> community applies TMTOWTDI doubly to XML, parsing XML presents some 
> challenges. XML::Atom, the CPAN module we use in our Atompub 
> endpoints, will use the preferred XML::LibXML if available, but we 
> ship XML::XPath in extlib to have known minimal XML support.
> 
> However, XML::XPath uses XML::Parser, which requires the expat library 
> for the heavy lifting. While most servers have expat (removing it on 
> my dev machine through the package manager would remove 185 dependent 
> packages--essentially everything), it is a dependency, and completely 
> fresh servers using some UNIX distributions may not have expat 
> installed. When neither libxml nor expat are installed, it's not 
> obvious what the problem is; mt-wizard reports that XML::Atom is 
> missing, which isn't precisely the case.
> 
> It would seem we could further use the same fallback technique we 
> already use, eventually falling back to a pure-perl XML module such as 
> XML::SAX::PurePerl. To keep developing MT and plugins simple, though, 
> we would want to build a sort of "XML::Any" module that encapsulates 
> the selection of an XML library and provides a common API. That's a 
> non-trivial undertaking, so other solutions are welcome.
> 
> Does anyone have other thoughts, problems, or solutions about XML 
> parsing in MT?
> 
> This isn't a pressing issue and isn't a performance focus, but I see 
> us doing much more in the future with Atompub and XML APIs (I 
> certainly am in my hack-day time), so we should plan for it. Thanks in 
> advance for your input!
> 
> 
> Mark Paschal
> Software developer, Movable Type
> mark at sixapart.com
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