Parser Interface -- Summary of Change Requests

[Don Park]

David,

>1) Allow SAX to work with an input stream as well as a URI.
...
>     void parse (String publicId, String systemId, InputStream input)
>       throws java.lang.Exception;
...

My suggestion would be to add following two methods to the EntityHandler
interface:

    public InputStream
getEntityByteStream (String systemID)
    throws Exception;

    public InputStream
getEntityCharStream (String systemID)
    throws Exception;

The parser implementation should invoke getEntityCharStream first to see if
the there is decoded data available.  If not, it should invoke
getEntityByteStream to get the raw data.

If both methods return null, then default URL based code is used.

>2) Simplify handler chaining by adding get* methods for existing
>   handlers.
...
>   This seems like a generally good idea (as will as a simple and
>   backwards-compatible change), and I am willing to implement it.
>   The only complication is that we'll have to define the default
>   state -- is the parser always required to return a default handler
>   if the user has not explicitly set one, or should it return null?


It would be up to the SAX implementation.  It might provide default
implementation depending on configuration.  For example, FooSaxDriver might
have setInputType() method which would install a default EntityHandler for
fetching XML document from a database.

BTW, You left out my other suggestion which was

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
In addition, I would like to have following two methods added to the Parser
API for driver-specific operations:

    public Object getDriverProperty(String name);
    public Object setDriverProperty(String name, Object value);

Property names should be prefixed with some unique values to avoid confusing
other drivers.  Note that above methods can be invoked without knowing which
driver is actually being used.  For example:

    parser.setDriverProperty("SuperDriver.lowercaseElements", Boolean.TRUE);
    parser.setDriverProperty("HungryDriver.cacheSize", new Integer(100000));
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Above two methods allow driver-specific code without actually having to
import anything.

Regards,

Don Park



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