GSoC Update: Week 1: GDOM

Good day.

Here is my first status report GDOM in the Google Summer of Code. It was introduced in a blog post earlier this week at [1] and is described a little on the wiki at [2].

1. http://blog.kosmokaryote.org/2011/05/hello-gnome-meet-gdom.html
2. http://live.gnome.org/XML

Completed this week

continued investigating libgeexml (stated before this week) to learn how I might access libxml2 in GDom from Vala.
better acquainted myself with some of the finer points of Vala using nice resources like the wonderful Vala tutorial.
re-familiarised myself with git (it's been a few months :)
created stubbed-out class structure reflecting the DOM Level 1 Core interface.
implemented basic parts of Node and Document: the API can load a file and traverse the tree structure, and access content and names.
source made available on gitorious for now

Issues

trying to decide whether it's important to have Attributes implement the same Node interface as everything else: it causes headaches
questions about whether data should be stored locally inside GDom objects, or just let properties and methods access data from libxml2 structures. The latter is preferred, but the former could be more convenient.
issues creating duplicate GDom Nodes for the same libxml2 Xml.Node* has prompted testing of a GDom Node cache, so only one GDom Node will exist per Xml.Node*
had to partially implement or stub out many other components to get Document mostly implemented.

Next Week

Finish more of Document and Node (this requires implementing a bit more of other components, and coming to decisions on the issues above)
Determine a testing approach and start creating test functions. (Right now, we just have a simple Main that tries to load and print out a file).
Investigate comments left on my first blog post by other interested developers. They cited other projects of interest and considerations.
Fill out more of the GDom page's content at http://live.gnome.org/XML

It has been an educational and busy first week. I hope to have more exciting news next week.

Cheerio!
Richard Schwarting