XML Processing with Python
March 19, 2010 by BPELpros.com
Product Description
Buy from Amazon XML Processing with Python
Comments
5 Responses to “XML Processing with Python”
March 19, 2010 by BPELpros.com
Product Description
Buy from Amazon XML Processing with Python
5 Responses to “XML Processing with Python”
I read somewhere on the cover ‘If you’re doing XML without Python, you’re wasting time’. They were right. I must have 5 books on the shelf for using XML and this one and the O’Reilly XML/JAVA book are the only ones I’ve found useful. In fact, it was this one that I finally said ‘I get it!’ and I went back and re-read the O’Reilly one with the lights on. What a language, what a book, What a relief!
Rating: 5 / 5
I haven’t clue what this book is about and how it relates to real life problem solving. I use SAX2 and DOM parsers daily and they are an integral part of my software projects. I fond this book to be a total waste of time and money and I would not, could not recommend it. The O’Reilly Book on the other hand it a gem
Rating: 2 / 5
I certainly can’t go so far as to say this book is for everyone, but I think it does an excellent job of presenting the material to the target audience. You need to have some XML knowledge under our belt and a programmer’s desire to learn the strengths of Python.
The CD that comes with this book contains all the code examples from the book, Python distributions for Unix/Linux/Win, the major Python XML tools/modules, as well the MySQL DBMS and the required Python modules for accessing this DB.
The author goes beyond focusing on the major tools, focusing on some of the small tricks you can use to search and check XML documents via the command line. He also covers the major programming interfaces that have become available, comparing and contrasting them, as well as showing how they can be incorporated into Python programming. If you’ve not had a chance to become acquainted with the MySQL DBMS, you also learn how to use it, in relationship to XML document processing and how to access it with Python.
Some of the Python code/command line examples are extremely simple, but I think he is quick enough in get to the heart of the subject and does a great job at covering a wide breathe of material. The book has left me with a bigger picture of XML, equiped to start processing XML, and excited about doing further research on this growing technology.
Rating: 5 / 5
When you try to learn a language you often get that “so what do I do next” problem. You know the syntax but dont have a domain within which to apply it. This book gives all the knowledge you need to get up and running with the language (you really dont need another Python book to start) with the EXCELLENT benefit of giving you a understanding of how to use Python for XML processing.
Makes a good addition to both the Python and XML book collections.
Tom
Rating: 4 / 5
Modern XML programmers should be using the SAX and DOM api’s for their projects, and the related standards. Those subjects should have been the foundation for this book.
Instead the author spends lots of time talking about some “pyxie” utility that reforms XML into some intermediate line oriented ascii format for processing. He even does system calls to assist in processing. If SAX and DOM didn’t exist, then yes, I suppose this is how you’d do it. This would be OK for 10% of the book, as an introduction, but not as the primary tool.
To be fair, he does talk about SAX and DOM in a couple chapters. The coverage was light and the examples weren’t great.
And no discussion of XSLT or XPath? Nor of schemas? To be fair the copyright says 2000, so this may have been written in 1999, so some of those items were not around or popular back then. But if the book is updated, these would need to be added.
I think readers might do better to grab one of the Java books for now, and try to translate to Python in their head I guess. I agree with one of the other reviewers that there’s a bit of filler in the book, though not as bad as some other books.
On the plus side the author is very polite and supportive and would be comforting to newer programmers.
I also like the way he keeps extending his xgrep project to have more and more features; it is nice to see an author show a large project evolving (I just kept wishing it was using DOM).
Rating: 2 / 5