Re: [syndication] O'Reilly's "Content Syndication with XML and RSS"

[burton@openprivacy.org]

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"James Linden" <jlinden@lindensys.net> writes:

> > I think that it needs to be strongly worded that if you want to use RSS,
> use an
> > XML parser.  Do not try to parse RSS by hand.
> 
>     Just out of curiosity - what is wrong with parsing RSS/RDF by hand?  There
> is nothing particuarly difficult or complex about parsing XML by hand,
> particuarly RSS - one of the simpler formats. My own personal tests have shown
> several different "hand parsers" run faster than several premade ones - on a
> nanosecond level anyway. The Snewp (http://snewp.com) uses one of those "hand
> parsers" in it's indexing agent in fact. Anyway, just my 2 cents on that
> point, no intention of starting a war or anything.

<snip/>

Nothing is wrong 70% of the time; the other 30% of the time everything is
broken.

- - UTF issues
- - explicit CDATA sections
- - incorrect handling of entities

etc.

The other problem is using a hand-rolled XML serializer; a number of these
packages do NOT serialize entities or unicode correctly.  Reptile fails about
30% of the time due to the poor design of serializers as they give us invalid
XML.

It is not that it is technically impossible; it is just that people don't put
their parsers/serializers through the correct set of use-cases before they
deploy them.  Thus they work in the labratory but fail when deployed in the
field.

Using a real XML Parser or a real XML Serializer (like JDOM) will save you from
this mess.

The main problem seems to be overhead.  You can get rid of this overhead if you
want but you compromise compatibility.

Kevin

- -- 
Kevin A. Burton ( burton@apache.org, burton@openprivacy.org, burtonator@acm.org )
             Location - San Francisco, CA, Cell - 415.595.9965
        Jabber - burtonator@jabber.org,  Web - http://relativity.yi.org/

They must have programmed it to get rid of the competition!

You mean like Microsoft?

Exactly!  -- Simpsons
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