Re: [xml] Tools to look inside a DTD allows?

[Michael Ludwig <milu71 gmx de>]

Jack Schwartz schrieb am 03.12.2010 um 16:48 (-0800):

> I'm looking for a documented way to look into a DTD [â], but haven't
> seen one.

I haven't seen any either. Googling for the following didn't turn up
anything either:

  programmatic access dtd -html

MSDN said back in 2002:

  Most XML 1.0 processors support DTD validation, but they don't support
  programmatic access to the information found in the DTD due to the
  complexity of the syntax.

> From the April 2002 issue of MSDN Magazine
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb986126.aspx

> The closest I've come up with is dumping the DTD with the following
> python program:

Looks simple enough, but I understand your concerns.

> The output shows what I need: the names, order and quantity of
> different children per parent element.  However, I am reliant on an
> undocumented output format, which could change and which would break
> my code if it did.
>
> Another approach would be to just look at the original DTD,
> searching for "<!ELEMENT" lines.
>
> However, it would be better if I used a tool to get this information
> if one existed.  (In my simple case, at least it would help with
> skipping comments in the DTD file, etc.)  Does such a tool or API
> exist in libxml2, lxml or somewhere else?

I think XML editors with DTD support must have a way of getting at the
information. At least if they want to assist you in editing.

-- 
Michael Ludwig