1 Introduction
2 ------------
3
4 See docs/index.html for the libxml2dom documentation.
5
6 Compatibility Warnings
7 ----------------------
8
9 From libxml2dom 0.4, nodeValue now returns different results in some cases.
10 Previously, it was possible to get the textual contents of an element using
11 the nodeValue property, although this is incompatible with the DOM
12 specifications. Instead, you should now use the textContent property to get
13 such data.
14
15 From libxml2dom 0.5, some XML-RPC nodes employ different properties.
16
17 Contact, Copyright and Licence Information
18 ------------------------------------------
19
20 The current Web page for libxml2dom at the time of release is:
21
22 http://www.boddie.org.uk/python/libxml2dom.html
23
24 Copyright and licence information can be found in the docs directory - see
25 docs/COPYING.txt, docs/lgpl-3.0.txt and docs/gpl-3.0.txt for more information.
26
27 Dependencies
28 ------------
29
30 libxml2 Tested with libxml2 2.6.17.
31 Use --with-python=<path to python executable> if building from
32 source. Previous releases of libxml2 in the 2.6 series may work,
33 but releases before 2.6.16 are not recommended.
34
35 For Windows users, see also the packages for libxml2, available
36 from the following site:
37
38 http://users.skynet.be/sbi/libxml-python/
39
40 Python Tested with Python 2.4.
41 Python releases from 2.2 onwards should be compatible with
42 libxml2dom. The principal requirement from such releases is the
43 new-style class support which permits the use of properties in
44 the libxml2dom implementation.
45
46 Testing
47 -------
48
49 Some of the tests require libxml2macro.py to be run on the test source code
50 first. Read the docstrings for the various test files before attempting to run
51 any of them. See also docs/NOTES_libxml2macro.txt for more information. Note
52 that such tests are retained for historical purposes and/or curiosity since
53 libxml2macro.py is no longer supported.
54
55 Issues
56 ------
57
58 The presence of xmlns attributes in serialised documents was called into
59 question, and the tests/namespace*.py files attempt to show the current
60 behaviour of libxml2dom.
61
62 Use of importNode seems to cause some kind of memory issue, probably related
63 to nodes being shared across documents. This was observed in libxml2 2.6.0 but
64 appears to be fixed in libxml2 2.6.16.
65
66 Even compared to minidom, importNode may seem very slow (even the
67 libxml2dom.macrolib implementation, too). A way is needed to get libxml2 to do
68 the node copying itself.
69
70 New in libxml2dom 0.5 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.4.7)
71 ------------------------------------------------------
72
73 * Fixed text node handling to work around the libxml2 tendency to merge text
74 nodes in its own functions.
75 * Changed some XML-RPC node properties in order to retain underlying DOM
76 properties such as data.
77 * Added convenience methods to the XML-RPC implementation providing combined
78 node creation and insertion. Introduced similar conveniences into the SOAP
79 implementation. These methods are similar to those found in the XMPP
80 implementation.
81 * Enabled prettyprinting support, finally.
82 * Added the hasChildNodes method, requested by Nick Galbreath.
83
84 New in libxml2dom 0.4.7 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.4.6)
85 --------------------------------------------------------
86
87 * Fixed the ownerElement of attributes created by XPath queries, and in all
88 other situations involving the implementation's get_node method.
89 * Fixed SVG matrix operations which should have involved matrix
90 post-multiplication.
91 * Replaced the getElementById implementation with one based on libxml2's
92 own support for finding attributes declared as identifiers.
93 * Introduced support for validation, together with the libxml2dom.errors
94 module. Relax-NG, XML Schema and Schematron are supported, depending on
95 libxml2 support.
96 * Improved error messages related to parsing.
97 * Added DOMConfiguration support to documents.
98
99 New in libxml2dom 0.4.6 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.4.5)
100 --------------------------------------------------------
101
102 * Exposed the libxml2 support for processing XInclude declarations.
103
104 New in libxml2dom 0.4.5 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.4.4)
105 --------------------------------------------------------
106
107 * Fixed crashes when parsing empty documents.
108 * Fixed operations involving the standard XML_NAMESPACE value, particularly
109 setAttributeNS.
110 * Introduced deletion of conflicting attributes in setAttributeNS.
111 * Added slightly nicer errors for parsing and serialising.
112 * Added some support for SOAP and XML-RPC message processing.
113
114 New in libxml2dom 0.4.4 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.4.3)
115 --------------------------------------------------------
116
117 * Relicensed under the LGPL version 3 or later (fixing PKG-INFO file).
118 * Improved XMPP support for messages, presence and events.
119 * Added Ubuntu Feisty (7.04) package support.
120
121 New in libxml2dom 0.4.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.4.2)
122 --------------------------------------------------------
123
124 * Enforced well-formedness in parse operations unless otherwise requested.
125 * Fixed access to null doctype properties.
126 * Added getElementById, firstChild and lastChild to the Node class.
127 * Added a __hash__ method to the Node class.
128 * Moved document checking into the Node class.
129 * Added an iterator for the NamedNodeMap class.
130 * Expanded the svg and events modules, including a test of SVG events.
131 * Split the debian-stable packages into debian-sarge and debian-etch.
132
133 New in libxml2dom 0.4.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.4.1)
134 --------------------------------------------------------
135
136 * Added missing impl attribute to NamedNodeMap, fixing attribute retrieval.
137 * Added documentElement to Document.
138 * Fixed and expanded the events module.
139 * Added lots of functionality to the svg module.
140
141 New in libxml2dom 0.4.1 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.4)
142 ------------------------------------------------------
143
144 * Fixed the absence of CDATA node creation and importing.
145
146 New in libxml2dom 0.4 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.6)
147 ------------------------------------------------------
148
149 * Changed the nodeValue property to return None for various node types, as
150 specified in the DOM specification (Level 3).
151 * Fixed various "not supported" exceptions and added tests which can raise
152 "wrong document" exceptions.
153 * Introduced an Implementation class, permitting specialised node creation.
154 * Added SVG-specific document support.
155 * Made parseURI work for HTML documents.
156 * Fixed getElementsByTagName(NS), as reported by Christian Seiler.
157 * Fixed previousSibling, nextSibling and parentNode crashes using
158 suggestions from Christian Seiler.
159 * Reintroduced node comparisons using suggestions from Christian Seiler.
160 * Fixed the absence of the CDATA node type.
161 * Added the textContent property to nodes.
162 * Added a getDOMImplementation function.
163 * Added an experimental events module.
164 * Added an htmlencoding parameter to the parse functions, as requested by
165 Iliyan Peychev.
166
167 New in libxml2dom 0.3.6 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.5)
168 --------------------------------------------------------
169
170 * Added cloneNode almost as a synonym for importNode (which, unlike in the
171 DOM specification, is present on all nodes).
172 * Introduced Debian stable package details - suggested by Robert Siemer.
173 * Changed libxml2mod import details to try libxmlmods - suggested by Lucian
174 Wischik.
175
176 New in libxml2dom 0.3.5 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.4)
177 --------------------------------------------------------
178
179 * Fixed nodeType for HTML document elements - reported by Robert Siemer.
180 * Fixed string results from XPath expressions - reported by Robert Siemer.
181
182 New in libxml2dom 0.3.4 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.3)
183 --------------------------------------------------------
184
185 * Attempted to introduce generated prefixes for attributes having namespaces
186 but whose names are unprefixed.
187 * Added support for xmlns attribute retrieval (getAttributeNS) and detection
188 (hasAttributeNS).
189 * Added the length attribute to NamedNodeMap; renamed the length method on
190 NodeList, adding a length attribute.
191
192 New in libxml2dom 0.3.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.2)
193 --------------------------------------------------------
194
195 * Removed redundant weakref usage.
196 * Added explicit copyright and licensing information to source files.
197
198 New in libxml2dom 0.3.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.1)
199 --------------------------------------------------------
200
201 * Improved the xmlns attribute creation controls.
202
203 New in libxml2dom 0.3.1 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3)
204 ------------------------------------------------------
205
206 * Fixed empty namespace declarations on elements created with namespaceURI
207 set to None. Previously, such declarations were missing.
208 * Fixed attribute creation and introduced stricter controls over the
209 construction of xmlns attributes.
210
211 New in libxml2dom 0.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.4)
212 ------------------------------------------------------
213
214 * Imposed much stricter tests on strings used with the libxml2dom API.
215 Strings given as arguments to methods and functions must now only contain
216 ASCII characters; any other character data must be provided as Unicode
217 objects. This change fixes various issues with XPath expressions, and
218 quite probably various other things.
219 * Fixed parentNode on Document objects (which caused xml.dom.ext.PrettyPrint
220 to crash).
221 * Added some support for the doctype attribute and related information.
222 * libxml2dom is now licensed under the LGPL - see docs/COPYING.txt for
223 details.
224
225 New in libxml2dom 0.2.4 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.3)
226 --------------------------------------------------------
227
228 * Fixed Unicode conversions in the Node's xpath method.
229
230 New in libxml2dom 0.2.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.2)
231 --------------------------------------------------------
232
233 * Fixed the parse function's docstring.
234 * Added the owner element to obtained attribute nodes.
235 * Fixed Debian package changelog distribution identifiers.
236
237 New in libxml2dom 0.2.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.1)
238 --------------------------------------------------------
239
240 * Fixed exception raising in parseURI, adding a docstring to explain the
241 current limitations around HTML parsing.
242
243 New in libxml2dom 0.2.1 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2)
244 ------------------------------------------------------
245
246 * Moved libxml2macro script to the tools directory.
247 * Added getElementsByTagNameNS.
248 * Added a normalize implementation.
249 * Added HTML parsing support.
250 * Added prettyprinting support.
251 * Fixed parseURI.
252 * Introduced better testing for Unicode objects, especially since things
253 like rdflib like to subclass the unicode type, and it might be more
254 convenient to detect such subclasses and convert their values
255 automatically.
256 * Improved some of the API documentation.
257 * Introduced better suppression of warnings, network access, and other
258 potentially intrusive libxml2 features.
259 * Reorganised the documentation, expanding the README.txt file at the
260 expense of the HTML documentation, but removing older, less relevant
261 information.
262 * Added Debian package support.
263
264 New in libxml2dom 0.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.1.3)
265 ------------------------------------------------------
266
267 * Adopted libxml2macro code within the libxml2dom classes, removing any
268 dependencies on the libxml2 module - this makes everything much faster
269 and virtually removes any necessity to use libxml2macro.
270 * Improved attribute and document node handling.
271 * Introduced document reference management.
272 * Introduced NodeList wrapper objects.
273
274 New in libxml2dom 0.1.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.1.2)
275 --------------------------------------------------------
276
277 * Fixed createElement.
278 * Introduced experimental libxml2macro tools, tests and libraries.
279
280 New in libxml2dom 0.1.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.1.1)
281 --------------------------------------------------------
282
283 * Fixed getAttributeNode and getAttributeNodeNS.
284 * Added comment node creation.
285 * Fixed empty namespace usage with elements and attributes.
286 * Introduced usage of the libxml2 file and memory parsing features.
287 * Introduced suppression of DTD retrieval and validation as the default
288 behaviour.
289 * Added experimental XPath method support.
290
291 New in libxml2dom 0.1.1
292 -----------------------
293
294 * Fixed text node creation.
295 * Fixed setAttributeNS.
296 * Added encoding parameters to convenience methods.
297 * Added the missing previousSibling property.
298 * Added release number to the package.
299
300 Release Procedures
301 ------------------
302
303 Update the libxml2dom/__init__.py and libxml2dom/macrolib/__init__.py
304 __version__ attributes.
305 Change the version number and package filename/directory in the documentation.
306 Change code examples in the documentation if appropriate.
307 Update the release notes (see above).
308 Update the package release notes (in the packages directory).
309 Check the setup.py file and ensure that all package directories are mentioned.
310 Check the release information in the PKG-INFO file.
311 Tag, export.
312 Archive, upload.
313 Make packages (see below).
314 Update PyPI, PythonInfo Wiki, Vaults of Parnassus entries.
315
316 Making Packages
317 ---------------
318
319 To make Debian-based packages:
320
321 1. Create new package directories under packages if necessary.
322 2. Make a symbolic link in the distribution's root directory to keep the
323 Debian tools happy; choose one of the following:
324
325 ln -s packages/ubuntu-hoary/python2.4-libxml2dom/debian/
326 ln -s packages/ubuntu-feisty/python-libxml2dom/debian/
327 ln -s packages/debian-sarge/python2.3-libxml2dom/debian/
328 ln -s packages/debian-etch/python-libxml2dom/debian/
329
330 3. Run the package builder:
331
332 dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot
333
334 4. Locate and tidy up the packages in the parent directory of the
335 distribution's root directory.