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, with combined
78 node creation and insertion if requested. Introduced similar conveniences
79 into the SOAP implementation.
80 * Enabled prettyprinting support, finally.
81
82 New in libxml2dom 0.4.7 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.4.6)
83 --------------------------------------------------------
84
85 * Fixed the ownerElement of attributes created by XPath queries, and in all
86 other situations involving the implementation's get_node method.
87 * Fixed SVG matrix operations which should have involved matrix
88 post-multiplication.
89 * Replaced the getElementById implementation with one based on libxml2's
90 own support for finding attributes declared as identifiers.
91 * Introduced support for validation, together with the libxml2dom.errors
92 module. Relax-NG, XML Schema and Schematron are supported, depending on
93 libxml2 support.
94 * Improved error messages related to parsing.
95 * Added DOMConfiguration support to documents.
96
97 New in libxml2dom 0.4.6 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.4.5)
98 --------------------------------------------------------
99
100 * Exposed the libxml2 support for processing XInclude declarations.
101
102 New in libxml2dom 0.4.5 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.4.4)
103 --------------------------------------------------------
104
105 * Fixed crashes when parsing empty documents.
106 * Fixed operations involving the standard XML_NAMESPACE value, particularly
107 setAttributeNS.
108 * Introduced deletion of conflicting attributes in setAttributeNS.
109 * Added slightly nicer errors for parsing and serialising.
110 * Added some support for SOAP and XML-RPC message processing.
111
112 New in libxml2dom 0.4.4 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.4.3)
113 --------------------------------------------------------
114
115 * Relicensed under the LGPL version 3 or later (fixing PKG-INFO file).
116 * Improved XMPP support for messages, presence and events.
117 * Added Ubuntu Feisty (7.04) package support.
118
119 New in libxml2dom 0.4.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.4.2)
120 --------------------------------------------------------
121
122 * Enforced well-formedness in parse operations unless otherwise requested.
123 * Fixed access to null doctype properties.
124 * Added getElementById, firstChild and lastChild to the Node class.
125 * Added a __hash__ method to the Node class.
126 * Moved document checking into the Node class.
127 * Added an iterator for the NamedNodeMap class.
128 * Expanded the svg and events modules, including a test of SVG events.
129 * Split the debian-stable packages into debian-sarge and debian-etch.
130
131 New in libxml2dom 0.4.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.4.1)
132 --------------------------------------------------------
133
134 * Added missing impl attribute to NamedNodeMap, fixing attribute retrieval.
135 * Added documentElement to Document.
136 * Fixed and expanded the events module.
137 * Added lots of functionality to the svg module.
138
139 New in libxml2dom 0.4.1 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.4)
140 ------------------------------------------------------
141
142 * Fixed the absence of CDATA node creation and importing.
143
144 New in libxml2dom 0.4 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.6)
145 ------------------------------------------------------
146
147 * Changed the nodeValue property to return None for various node types, as
148 specified in the DOM specification (Level 3).
149 * Fixed various "not supported" exceptions and added tests which can raise
150 "wrong document" exceptions.
151 * Introduced an Implementation class, permitting specialised node creation.
152 * Added SVG-specific document support.
153 * Made parseURI work for HTML documents.
154 * Fixed getElementsByTagName(NS), as reported by Christian Seiler.
155 * Fixed previousSibling, nextSibling and parentNode crashes using
156 suggestions from Christian Seiler.
157 * Reintroduced node comparisons using suggestions from Christian Seiler.
158 * Fixed the absence of the CDATA node type.
159 * Added the textContent property to nodes.
160 * Added a getDOMImplementation function.
161 * Added an experimental events module.
162 * Added an htmlencoding parameter to the parse functions, as requested by
163 Iliyan Peychev.
164
165 New in libxml2dom 0.3.6 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.5)
166 --------------------------------------------------------
167
168 * Added cloneNode almost as a synonym for importNode (which, unlike in the
169 DOM specification, is present on all nodes).
170 * Introduced Debian stable package details - suggested by Robert Siemer.
171 * Changed libxml2mod import details to try libxmlmods - suggested by Lucian
172 Wischik.
173
174 New in libxml2dom 0.3.5 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.4)
175 --------------------------------------------------------
176
177 * Fixed nodeType for HTML document elements - reported by Robert Siemer.
178 * Fixed string results from XPath expressions - reported by Robert Siemer.
179
180 New in libxml2dom 0.3.4 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.3)
181 --------------------------------------------------------
182
183 * Attempted to introduce generated prefixes for attributes having namespaces
184 but whose names are unprefixed.
185 * Added support for xmlns attribute retrieval (getAttributeNS) and detection
186 (hasAttributeNS).
187 * Added the length attribute to NamedNodeMap; renamed the length method on
188 NodeList, adding a length attribute.
189
190 New in libxml2dom 0.3.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.2)
191 --------------------------------------------------------
192
193 * Removed redundant weakref usage.
194 * Added explicit copyright and licensing information to source files.
195
196 New in libxml2dom 0.3.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3.1)
197 --------------------------------------------------------
198
199 * Improved the xmlns attribute creation controls.
200
201 New in libxml2dom 0.3.1 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.3)
202 ------------------------------------------------------
203
204 * Fixed empty namespace declarations on elements created with namespaceURI
205 set to None. Previously, such declarations were missing.
206 * Fixed attribute creation and introduced stricter controls over the
207 construction of xmlns attributes.
208
209 New in libxml2dom 0.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.4)
210 ------------------------------------------------------
211
212 * Imposed much stricter tests on strings used with the libxml2dom API.
213 Strings given as arguments to methods and functions must now only contain
214 ASCII characters; any other character data must be provided as Unicode
215 objects. This change fixes various issues with XPath expressions, and
216 quite probably various other things.
217 * Fixed parentNode on Document objects (which caused xml.dom.ext.PrettyPrint
218 to crash).
219 * Added some support for the doctype attribute and related information.
220 * libxml2dom is now licensed under the LGPL - see docs/COPYING.txt for
221 details.
222
223 New in libxml2dom 0.2.4 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.3)
224 --------------------------------------------------------
225
226 * Fixed Unicode conversions in the Node's xpath method.
227
228 New in libxml2dom 0.2.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.2)
229 --------------------------------------------------------
230
231 * Fixed the parse function's docstring.
232 * Added the owner element to obtained attribute nodes.
233 * Fixed Debian package changelog distribution identifiers.
234
235 New in libxml2dom 0.2.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2.1)
236 --------------------------------------------------------
237
238 * Fixed exception raising in parseURI, adding a docstring to explain the
239 current limitations around HTML parsing.
240
241 New in libxml2dom 0.2.1 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.2)
242 ------------------------------------------------------
243
244 * Moved libxml2macro script to the tools directory.
245 * Added getElementsByTagNameNS.
246 * Added a normalize implementation.
247 * Added HTML parsing support.
248 * Added prettyprinting support.
249 * Fixed parseURI.
250 * Introduced better testing for Unicode objects, especially since things
251 like rdflib like to subclass the unicode type, and it might be more
252 convenient to detect such subclasses and convert their values
253 automatically.
254 * Improved some of the API documentation.
255 * Introduced better suppression of warnings, network access, and other
256 potentially intrusive libxml2 features.
257 * Reorganised the documentation, expanding the README.txt file at the
258 expense of the HTML documentation, but removing older, less relevant
259 information.
260 * Added Debian package support.
261
262 New in libxml2dom 0.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.1.3)
263 ------------------------------------------------------
264
265 * Adopted libxml2macro code within the libxml2dom classes, removing any
266 dependencies on the libxml2 module - this makes everything much faster
267 and virtually removes any necessity to use libxml2macro.
268 * Improved attribute and document node handling.
269 * Introduced document reference management.
270 * Introduced NodeList wrapper objects.
271
272 New in libxml2dom 0.1.3 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.1.2)
273 --------------------------------------------------------
274
275 * Fixed createElement.
276 * Introduced experimental libxml2macro tools, tests and libraries.
277
278 New in libxml2dom 0.1.2 (Changes since libxml2dom 0.1.1)
279 --------------------------------------------------------
280
281 * Fixed getAttributeNode and getAttributeNodeNS.
282 * Added comment node creation.
283 * Fixed empty namespace usage with elements and attributes.
284 * Introduced usage of the libxml2 file and memory parsing features.
285 * Introduced suppression of DTD retrieval and validation as the default
286 behaviour.
287 * Added experimental XPath method support.
288
289 New in libxml2dom 0.1.1
290 -----------------------
291
292 * Fixed text node creation.
293 * Fixed setAttributeNS.
294 * Added encoding parameters to convenience methods.
295 * Added the missing previousSibling property.
296 * Added release number to the package.
297
298 Release Procedures
299 ------------------
300
301 Update the libxml2dom/__init__.py and libxml2dom/macrolib/__init__.py
302 __version__ attributes.
303 Change the version number and package filename/directory in the documentation.
304 Change code examples in the documentation if appropriate.
305 Update the release notes (see above).
306 Update the package release notes (in the packages directory).
307 Check the setup.py file and ensure that all package directories are mentioned.
308 Check the release information in the PKG-INFO file.
309 Tag, export.
310 Archive, upload.
311 Make packages (see below).
312 Update PyPI, PythonInfo Wiki, Vaults of Parnassus entries.
313
314 Making Packages
315 ---------------
316
317 To make Debian-based packages:
318
319 1. Create new package directories under packages if necessary.
320 2. Make a symbolic link in the distribution's root directory to keep the
321 Debian tools happy; choose one of the following:
322
323 ln -s packages/ubuntu-hoary/python2.4-libxml2dom/debian/
324 ln -s packages/ubuntu-feisty/python-libxml2dom/debian/
325 ln -s packages/debian-sarge/python2.3-libxml2dom/debian/
326 ln -s packages/debian-etch/python-libxml2dom/debian/
327
328 3. Run the package builder:
329
330 dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot
331
332 4. Locate and tidy up the packages in the parent directory of the
333 distribution's root directory.