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. Relax-NG, XML Schema and Schematron are supported, depending on
79 libxml2 support.
80 * Improved error messages related to parsing.
81 * Added DOMConfiguration support to documents.
82
83 New in libxml2dom 0.4.6 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.4.5)
84 --------------------------------------------------------
85
86 * Exposed the libxml2 support for processing XInclude declarations.
87
88 New in libxml2dom 0.4.5 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.4.4)
89 --------------------------------------------------------
90
91 * Fixed crashes when parsing empty documents.
92 * Fixed operations involving the standard XML_NAMESPACE value, particularly
93 setAttributeNS.
94 * Introduced deletion of conflicting attributes in setAttributeNS.
95 * Added slightly nicer errors for parsing and serialising.
96 * Added some support for SOAP and XML-RPC message processing.
97
98 New in libxml2dom 0.4.4 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.4.3)
99 --------------------------------------------------------
100
101 * Relicensed under the LGPL version 3 or later (fixing PKG-INFO file).
102 * Improved XMPP support for messages, presence and events.
103 * Added Ubuntu Feisty (7.04) package support.
104
105 New in libxml2dom 0.4.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.4.2)
106 --------------------------------------------------------
107
108 * Enforced well-formedness in parse operations unless otherwise requested.
109 * Fixed access to null doctype properties.
110 * Added getElementById, firstChild and lastChild to the Node class.
111 * Added a __hash__ method to the Node class.
112 * Moved document checking into the Node class.
113 * Added an iterator for the NamedNodeMap class.
114 * Expanded the svg and events modules, including a test of SVG events.
115 * Split the debian-stable packages into debian-sarge and debian-etch.
116
117 New in libxml2dom 0.4.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.4.1)
118 --------------------------------------------------------
119
120 * Added missing impl attribute to NamedNodeMap, fixing attribute retrieval.
121 * Added documentElement to Document.
122 * Fixed and expanded the events module.
123 * Added lots of functionality to the svg module.
124
125 New in libxml2dom 0.4.1 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.4)
126 ------------------------------------------------------
127
128 * Fixed the absence of CDATA node creation and importing.
129
130 New in libxml2dom 0.4 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.6)
131 ------------------------------------------------------
132
133 * Changed the nodeValue property to return None for various node types, as
134 specified in the DOM specification (Level 3).
135 * Fixed various "not supported" exceptions and added tests which can raise
136 "wrong document" exceptions.
137 * Introduced an Implementation class, permitting specialised node creation.
138 * Added SVG-specific document support.
139 * Made parseURI work for HTML documents.
140 * Fixed getElementsByTagName(NS), as reported by Christian Seiler.
141 * Fixed previousSibling, nextSibling and parentNode crashes using
142 suggestions from Christian Seiler.
143 * Reintroduced node comparisons using suggestions from Christian Seiler.
144 * Fixed the absence of the CDATA node type.
145 * Added the textContent property to nodes.
146 * Added a getDOMImplementation function.
147 * Added an experimental events module.
148 * Added an htmlencoding parameter to the parse functions, as requested by
149 Iliyan Peychev.
150
151 New in libxml2dom 0.3.6 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.5)
152 --------------------------------------------------------
153
154 * Added cloneNode almost as a synonym for importNode (which, unlike in the
155 DOM specification, is present on all nodes).
156 * Introduced Debian stable package details - suggested by Robert Siemer.
157 * Changed libxml2mod import details to try libxmlmods - suggested by Lucian
158 Wischik.
159
160 New in libxml2dom 0.3.5 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.4)
161 --------------------------------------------------------
162
163 * Fixed nodeType for HTML document elements - reported by Robert Siemer.
164 * Fixed string results from XPath expressions - reported by Robert Siemer.
165
166 New in libxml2dom 0.3.4 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.3)
167 --------------------------------------------------------
168
169 * Attempted to introduce generated prefixes for attributes having namespaces
170 but whose names are unprefixed.
171 * Added support for xmlns attribute retrieval (getAttributeNS) and detection
172 (hasAttributeNS).
173 * Added the length attribute to NamedNodeMap; renamed the length method on
174 NodeList, adding a length attribute.
175
176 New in libxml2dom 0.3.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.2)
177 --------------------------------------------------------
178
179 * Removed redundant weakref usage.
180 * Added explicit copyright and licensing information to source files.
181
182 New in libxml2dom 0.3.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.1)
183 --------------------------------------------------------
184
185 * Improved the xmlns attribute creation controls.
186
187 New in libxml2dom 0.3.1 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3)
188 ------------------------------------------------------
189
190 * Fixed empty namespace declarations on elements created with namespaceURI
191 set to None. Previously, such declarations were missing.
192 * Fixed attribute creation and introduced stricter controls over the
193 construction of xmlns attributes.
194
195 New in libxml2dom 0.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.4)
196 ------------------------------------------------------
197
198 * Imposed much stricter tests on strings used with the libxml2dom API.
199 Strings given as arguments to methods and functions must now only contain
200 ASCII characters; any other character data must be provided as Unicode
201 objects. This change fixes various issues with XPath expressions, and
202 quite probably various other things.
203 * Fixed parentNode on Document objects (which caused xml.dom.ext.PrettyPrint
204 to crash).
205 * Added some support for the doctype attribute and related information.
206 * libxml2dom is now licensed under the LGPL - see docs/COPYING.txt for
207 details.
208
209 New in libxml2dom 0.2.4 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.3)
210 --------------------------------------------------------
211
212 * Fixed Unicode conversions in the Node's xpath method.
213
214 New in libxml2dom 0.2.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.2)
215 --------------------------------------------------------
216
217 * Fixed the parse function's docstring.
218 * Added the owner element to obtained attribute nodes.
219 * Fixed Debian package changelog distribution identifiers.
220
221 New in libxml2dom 0.2.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.1)
222 --------------------------------------------------------
223
224 * Fixed exception raising in parseURI, adding a docstring to explain the
225 current limitations around HTML parsing.
226
227 New in libxml2dom 0.2.1 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2)
228 ------------------------------------------------------
229
230 * Moved libxml2macro script to the tools directory.
231 * Added getElementsByTagNameNS.
232 * Added a normalize implementation.
233 * Added HTML parsing support.
234 * Added prettyprinting support.
235 * Fixed parseURI.
236 * Introduced better testing for Unicode objects, especially since things
237 like rdflib like to subclass the unicode type, and it might be more
238 convenient to detect such subclasses and convert their values
239 automatically.
240 * Improved some of the API documentation.
241 * Introduced better suppression of warnings, network access, and other
242 potentially intrusive libxml2 features.
243 * Reorganised the documentation, expanding the README.txt file at the
244 expense of the HTML documentation, but removing older, less relevant
245 information.
246 * Added Debian package support.
247
248 New in libxml2dom 0.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.1.3)
249 ------------------------------------------------------
250
251 * Adopted libxml2macro code within the libxml2dom classes, removing any
252 dependencies on the libxml2 module - this makes everything much faster
253 and virtually removes any necessity to use libxml2macro.
254 * Improved attribute and document node handling.
255 * Introduced document reference management.
256 * Introduced NodeList wrapper objects.
257
258 New in libxml2dom 0.1.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.1.2)
259 --------------------------------------------------------
260
261 * Fixed createElement.
262 * Introduced experimental libxml2macro tools, tests and libraries.
263
264 New in libxml2dom 0.1.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.1.1)
265 --------------------------------------------------------
266
267 * Fixed getAttributeNode and getAttributeNodeNS.
268 * Added comment node creation.
269 * Fixed empty namespace usage with elements and attributes.
270 * Introduced usage of the libxml2 file and memory parsing features.
271 * Introduced suppression of DTD retrieval and validation as the default
272 behaviour.
273 * Added experimental XPath method support.
274
275 New in libxml2dom 0.1.1
276 -----------------------
277
278 * Fixed text node creation.
279 * Fixed setAttributeNS.
280 * Added encoding parameters to convenience methods.
281 * Added the missing previousSibling property.
282 * Added release number to the package.
283
284 Release Procedures
285 ------------------
286
287 Update the libxml2dom/__init__.py and libxml2dom/macrolib/__init__.py
288 __version__ attributes.
289 Change the version number and package filename/directory in the documentation.
290 Change code examples in the documentation if appropriate.
291 Update the release notes (see above).
292 Update the package release notes (in the packages directory).
293 Check the setup.py file and ensure that all package directories are mentioned.
294 Check the release information in the PKG-INFO file.
295 Tag, export.
296 Archive, upload.
297 Make packages (see below).
298 Update PyPI, PythonInfo Wiki, Vaults of Parnassus entries.
299
300 Making Packages
301 ---------------
302
303 To make Debian-based packages:
304
305 1. Create new package directories under packages if necessary.
306 2. Make a symbolic link in the distribution's root directory to keep the
307 Debian tools happy; choose one of the following:
308
309 ln -s packages/ubuntu-hoary/python2.4-libxml2dom/debian/
310 ln -s packages/ubuntu-feisty/python-libxml2dom/debian/
311 ln -s packages/debian-sarge/python2.3-libxml2dom/debian/
312 ln -s packages/debian-etch/python-libxml2dom/debian/
313
314 3. Run the package builder:
315
316 dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot
317
318 4. Locate and tidy up the packages in the parent directory of the
319 distribution's root directory.