Re: [xml] python xpath

[Daniel Veillard <veillard redhat com>]

On Wed, Jul 14, 2004 at 04:50:19PM -0400, Stefan Seefeld wrote:
> Daniel Veillard wrote:
>
> > > Daniel: it might indeed be convenient to return the content in the __str__
> > > attribute
> > > (for text nodes only, of course), thus returning the actual text if 'print
> > > node'
> > > is called.
> >
> >
> >   would you feel like making a small patch to python/libxml.py
> > there is also the serialize() method but which is both more generic and 
> more
> > complex than a simple text node dump.
>
> right. Well, given that this is just a tiny convenience, I'd suggest just to
> add
>
> __str__ = get_content
>
> at line 264
>
> What do you think ?

  Is dumping the content really the right thing to do ? Should __str__
really act as a serialization mechnism (in which case get_content or
serialize is the right handler) or rather as a debug mechanism (in
which case the type of the node sounds more important than it serialization).
  Also note that get_content() will return the string value of the
full subtree, is that really useful ? Except for a text node this 
does not sound the right operation, really, it not a representation
nor a good debug information:

> > > doc = libxml2.parseFile('tst.xml')
> > > doc.serialize()
'<?xml 
version="1.0"?>\n<top>\n<doc>1</doc>\n<doc>1</doc>\n<doc>1</doc>\n<doc>1</doc>\n<doc>1</doc>\n<doc>1</doc>\n<doc>1</doc>\n<doc>1</doc>\n<doc>1</doc>\n</top>\n'
> > > doc.get_content()
'\n1\n1\n1\n1\n1\n1\n1\n1\n1\n'
> > >

  Jumping on implementing the wrong semantic for __str__ could be painful
in the long run.

Daniel

-- 
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veillard redhat com  | libxml GNOME XML XSLT toolkit  http://xmlsoft.org/
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