XML Hell

[billroper]

I'm currently being bedeviled by some interesting XML to parse. To wit:


<myObject>
<this value=fred>
</this>
<that value=barney>
</that>
</myObject>


Ok, you can parse this, but why would you want to? Shouldn't this be:


<myObject this=fred that=barney>
</myObject>


Or even:


<myObject this=fred that=barney />


It's like they were being paid by the character...

Comments

XML tricks

[hazelchaz]

Would this work equally well?


Fred
Barney


My thought is that it's generated by a program that works well enough to accurately assemble XML that does what it's supposed to do, and once it reached that point there was no interest in optimizing it further.

Re: XML tricks

[billroper]

No, it was all generated by human beings.

Re: XML tricks

[hazelchaz]

Well, source code is usually generated by human beings too. The same principle applies -- the person learning XML a bit at a time learned enough about the syntax to create something that parsed correctly, and then stopped.

[mdlbear]

Of course, what you're more likely to see is

<myObject>
  <property name="this" value="fred" />
  <property name="that" value="barney" />
</myObject>

Did I mention that I don't like XML very much?

[madfilkentist]

It depends on what went into the schema. If a lot of other options exist (e.g., address, phone, etc.), it may make sense for the schema to make "this" and "that" separate tags. But if the parameter really is "value", and not something specific like "name", that's a problem.

I've seen too many complicated XML schemas to have an opinion without detailed information, which I understand you can't give out here.

[whl.livejournal.com]

You've seen schemas? The first place I worked at that used XML, I asked if we had a schema, and was told that we (and the cell phone carrier feeding us data) just sort of made it up as we went along.

Which explains why, when I had that company moved to Pittsburgh out from under me, my new boss (who at one time had been my boss at the old place; pretty much the whole development team moved en masse across the Kennedy to avoid Pittsburgh), I found that I was the guy in charge of our XML schema, and the code to validate against it...