SAX: Parser Factory class

[Andrew n marshall]

While it is great that there are so many SAX parsers available, the thing that
bothers me is that my application has to know what Parser to load in just to
use SAX.  And  this means that even is a SAX parser is available on the users
machine, they may still have to download the one I use to to run my
application.

If there is already a solution for this, then please let me know.

David Megginson had mentioned the sax.parser property as a possible solution,
but I would like to see the following my general solution:

public class org.sax.ParserFactory() {
   /* static methods */
   // Registers a SAX driver
   public static void addParserFactory();
   // Retrieves all registered SAX drivers
   public static ParserFactory[] getParserFactorys();
   // Conveince method to return a parser
   // from the first registered driver
   public static Parser createDefaultParser();
   /* Instance Methods */
   // Returns a new Parser
   public Parser createParser();
   // Various identifying methods
   // Subject to change for what appropriate method
   abstract public String getDriverName();
   abstract public long getDriverVersion();
   abstract public long getSAXVersion();
}
If the above was implemented, then the following piece of code in the
ParserFactory implementation could automatically register the SAX Driver.

   static {
      org.sax.ParserFactory.addParserFactory( new MyParserFactory() );
   }


I think this is a relative clean and forward compatible way to handle SAX
Drivers.  And simplifies life for SAX based application programmers.  I
realize it is a bit heavy weight since it require that the Factory be an
abstract class instead of an interface, but I think the benefit is worth it.

Any thoughts?



Andrew n marshall
  student - artist - programmer
    http://www.media-electronica.com/anm-bin/anm
      "Everyone a mentor, Everyone a pupil"


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