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 and docs/LICENCE.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 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.6)
69 ------------------------------------------------------
70
71 * Changed the nodeValue property to return None for various node types, as
72 specified in the DOM specification (Level 3).
73 * Fixed various "not supported" exceptions and added tests which can raise
74 "wrong document" exceptions.
75 * Introduced an Implementation class, permitting specialised node creation.
76 * Added SVG-specific document support.
77 * Made parseURI work for HTML documents.
78 * Fixed getElementsByTagName(NS), as reported by Christian Seiler.
79 * Fixed previousSibling, nextSibling and parentNode crashes using
80 suggestions from Christian Seiler.
81 * Reintroduced node comparisons using suggestions from Christian Seiler.
82 * Fixed the absence of the CDATA node type.
83 * Added the textContent property to nodes.
84 * Added a getDOMImplementation function.
85 * Added an experimental events module.
86 * Added an htmlencoding parameter to the parse functions, as requested by
87 Iliyan Peychev.
88
89 New in libxml2dom 0.3.6 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.5)
90 --------------------------------------------------------
91
92 * Added cloneNode almost as a synonym for importNode (which, unlike in the
93 DOM specification, is present on all nodes).
94 * Introduced Debian stable package details - suggested by Robert Siemer.
95 * Changed libxml2mod import details to try libxmlmods - suggested by Lucian
96 Wischik.
97
98 New in libxml2dom 0.3.5 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.4)
99 --------------------------------------------------------
100
101 * Fixed nodeType for HTML document elements - reported by Robert Siemer.
102 * Fixed string results from XPath expressions - reported by Robert Siemer.
103
104 New in libxml2dom 0.3.4 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.3)
105 --------------------------------------------------------
106
107 * Attempted to introduce generated prefixes for attributes having namespaces
108 but whose names are unprefixed.
109 * Added support for xmlns attribute retrieval (getAttributeNS) and detection
110 (hasAttributeNS).
111 * Added the length attribute to NamedNodeMap; renamed the length method on
112 NodeList, adding a length attribute.
113
114 New in libxml2dom 0.3.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.2)
115 --------------------------------------------------------
116
117 * Removed redundant weakref usage.
118 * Added explicit copyright and licensing information to source files.
119
120 New in libxml2dom 0.3.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.1)
121 --------------------------------------------------------
122
123 * Improved the xmlns attribute creation controls.
124
125 New in libxml2dom 0.3.1 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3)
126 ------------------------------------------------------
127
128 * Fixed empty namespace declarations on elements created with namespaceURI
129 set to None. Previously, such declarations were missing.
130 * Fixed attribute creation and introduced stricter controls over the
131 construction of xmlns attributes.
132
133 New in libxml2dom 0.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.4)
134 ------------------------------------------------------
135
136 * Imposed much stricter tests on strings used with the libxml2dom API.
137 Strings given as arguments to methods and functions must now only contain
138 ASCII characters; any other character data must be provided as Unicode
139 objects. This change fixes various issues with XPath expressions, and
140 quite probably various other things.
141 * Fixed parentNode on Document objects (which caused xml.dom.ext.PrettyPrint
142 to crash).
143 * Added some support for the doctype attribute and related information.
144 * libxml2dom is now licensed under the LGPL - see docs/COPYING.txt for
145 details.
146
147 New in libxml2dom 0.2.4 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.3)
148 --------------------------------------------------------
149
150 * Fixed Unicode conversions in the Node's xpath method.
151
152 New in libxml2dom 0.2.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.2)
153 --------------------------------------------------------
154
155 * Fixed the parse function's docstring.
156 * Added the owner element to obtained attribute nodes.
157 * Fixed Debian package changelog distribution identifiers.
158
159 New in libxml2dom 0.2.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.1)
160 --------------------------------------------------------
161
162 * Fixed exception raising in parseURI, adding a docstring to explain the
163 current limitations around HTML parsing.
164
165 New in libxml2dom 0.2.1 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2)
166 ------------------------------------------------------
167
168 * Moved libxml2macro script to the tools directory.
169 * Added getElementsByTagNameNS.
170 * Added a normalize implementation.
171 * Added HTML parsing support.
172 * Added prettyprinting support.
173 * Fixed parseURI.
174 * Introduced better testing for Unicode objects, especially since things
175 like rdflib like to subclass the unicode type, and it might be more
176 convenient to detect such subclasses and convert their values
177 automatically.
178 * Improved some of the API documentation.
179 * Introduced better suppression of warnings, network access, and other
180 potentially intrusive libxml2 features.
181 * Reorganised the documentation, expanding the README.txt file at the
182 expense of the HTML documentation, but removing older, less relevant
183 information.
184 * Added Debian package support.
185
186 New in libxml2dom 0.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.1.3)
187 ------------------------------------------------------
188
189 * Adopted libxml2macro code within the libxml2dom classes, removing any
190 dependencies on the libxml2 module - this makes everything much faster
191 and virtually removes any necessity to use libxml2macro.
192 * Improved attribute and document node handling.
193 * Introduced document reference management.
194 * Introduced NodeList wrapper objects.
195
196 New in libxml2dom 0.1.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.1.2)
197 --------------------------------------------------------
198
199 * Fixed createElement.
200 * Introduced experimental libxml2macro tools, tests and libraries.
201
202 New in libxml2dom 0.1.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.1.1)
203 --------------------------------------------------------
204
205 * Fixed getAttributeNode and getAttributeNodeNS.
206 * Added comment node creation.
207 * Fixed empty namespace usage with elements and attributes.
208 * Introduced usage of the libxml2 file and memory parsing features.
209 * Introduced suppression of DTD retrieval and validation as the default
210 behaviour.
211 * Added experimental XPath method support.
212
213 New in libxml2dom 0.1.1
214 -----------------------
215
216 * Fixed text node creation.
217 * Fixed setAttributeNS.
218 * Added encoding parameters to convenience methods.
219 * Added the missing previousSibling property.
220 * Added release number to the package.
221
222 Release Procedures
223 ------------------
224
225 Update the libxml2dom/__init__.py and libxml2dom/macrolib/__init__.py
226 __version__ attributes.
227 Change the version number and package filename/directory in the documentation.
228 Change code examples in the documentation if appropriate.
229 Update the release notes (see above).
230 Update the package release notes (in the packages directory).
231 Check the setup.py file and ensure that all package directories are mentioned.
232 Check the release information in the PKG-INFO file.
233 Tag, export.
234 Archive, upload.
235 Make packages (see below).
236 Update PyPI, PythonInfo Wiki, Vaults of Parnassus entries.
237
238 Making Packages
239 ---------------
240
241 To make Debian-based packages:
242
243 1. Create new package directories under packages if necessary.
244 2. Make a symbolic link in the distribution's root directory to keep the
245 Debian tools happy; choose one of the following:
246
247 ln -s packages/ubuntu-hoary/python2.4-libxml2dom/debian/
248 ln -s packages/debian-stable/python2.3-libxml2dom/debian/
249
250 3. Run the package builder:
251
252 dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot
253
254 4. Locate and tidy up the packages in the parent directory of the
255 distribution's root directory.