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