[jdev] Re: Re: Parsing XMPP/Jabber protocol

[Bill de hÓra]

JD Conley wrote:
> I think we'd all agree.  But if you parse through the code in all the
> open source libraries posted earlier you'll most likely find nobody has
> been able to do it without being tricky.  Even though the XMPP code I
> work on isn't available, I can say that our XMPP parser is tricky as
> well.  It seems stream based XML parsers need another rev before they're
> up for the task of XMPP without intervention.

I find myself in agreeing. I was dealing with this a while back in 
Python and there doesn't seem to be a clean way to deal with either 
delayed closing tags or incomplete XML buffers (I'm planning to get back 
to that parsing library in the new year and I'm not looking forward to 
it). I'm not sure whether this is a 'feature' in the XMPP stream/frame 
design or whether XML is suboptimal for streaming protocols (possibly 
both). It may be as simple as having SAX implementations revved, 
nonetheless I don't understand the rationale for leaving an XML parse in 
mid air the way XMPP does it, as opposed to say a series of self 
contained XML documents.

cheers
Bill de hÓra