Mod??SAX: Feature Matrix

[David Megginson]

It would be interesting to put together a feature matrix representing
current practice among SAX parsers/drivers, at least in the Java
world.  Assuming that I simply wrapped the existing drivers with a
Mod??Parser adapter, what features would and would not be supported?

>From my fuzzy recollection, here's what AElfred supported just about a 
year ago before I gave it up:

                                 true              false
------------------------------------------------------------------------
validation                       no                yes
external-general-entities        yes               no
external-parameter-entities      yes               no
namespaces                       no                yes
normalize-text                   yes               no
use-locator                      yes               no

(Wherever there's a 'no' answer, the driver should throw a
SAXNotSupportedException).  Actually, it would probably be safe to
accept false for 'normalize-text' as well.  If I were to wrap the
AElfred driver, then, I'd do something like this (there's likely some
kind of a static initialisation trap here, but it should be good
enough as an unreliable example):


public class AElfredModParser extends com.microstar.xml.SAXDriver
                              implements org.xml.sax.ModParser
{
  private static Hashtable featureTable = new Hashtable();
  private static final Object TRUE = new Object();
  private static final Object FALSE = new Object();
  private static final Object TRUEFALSE = new Object();
  private static final String FEATURE_NS = "http://xml.org/sax/features/";

  static {
    featureTable.put(FEATURE_NS + "validation", FALSE);
    featureTable.put(FEATURE_NS + "external-general-entities", TRUE);
    featureTable.put(FEATURE_NS + "external-parameter-entities", TRUE);
    featureTable.put(FEATURE_NS + "namespaces", TRUE);
    featureTable.put(FEATURE_NS + "normalize-text", TRUEFALSE);
    featureTable.put(FEATURE_NS + "use-locator", TRUE);
  }

  public void setFeature (String featureID, boolean state)
    throws SAXNotSupportedException
  {
    Object allowedState = featureTable.get(featureID);
    if (allowedState == null) {
      throw new SAXNotRecognizedException();
    } else if ((state && allowedState == FALSE) ||
               (!state && allowedState == TRUE)) {
      throw new SAXNotSupportedException();
    }
  }

  // etc. for setHandler, set, and get
}


All the best,


David

-- 
David Megginson                 david at megginson.com
           http://www.megginson.com/

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