[arch-projects] XML holocaust

[Andy Roberts]

I agree. I always liked the concept of XML, but in practise it's a nightmare. 
It obviously has its uses, but man, it can be a tad too verbose. XML is the 
"language" of web services, so just think that all this flabby XML is 
clogging up bandwidth.

On Saturday 19 Mar 2005 18:11, Dusty Phillips wrote:
> Was wondering if anybody here actually *likes* XML. You'll probably be
> shocked to find out I can't stand the language, since Java programmers
> seem to be inextricably married to the language. In fact, the link to
> XML, and not Java itself is what often makes me feel embarrassed to be
> a Java programmer!
>
> Enter Groovy. Between GPath/XmlSlurp
> (http://groovy.codehaus.org/GPath) and
> GroovyMarkup(http://groovy.codehaus.org/GroovyMarkup), I'm finding
> that its practically painless to interface to XML coming and going.
> While working on the weather applet yesterday, I found that I could
> read the weather.com XML file using dot syntax _without having to
> parse it_.  I've also experimented with GroovyMarkup and the XML
> builder. Again, you can use dot syntax and basic Groovy/Java code to
> create an XML file, and can also use typical programming language
> constructs (loops, conditionals) to simplify the task.
>
> Ok, you can probably do similar stuff with Python, Ruby, or any other
> scripting langugae. If you can't somebody should write a module that
> does it. ;-)
>
> Being able to ignore/abstract XML is great, but I started thinking it
> should be possible in some cases to completely discard it. My first
> example is ant. Those who don't code Java probably still use make
> (with the antiquated Makefile syntax), or that neat Python
> distribution tool, or something similar. or dissimilar. In my case,
> I've been taught to use ant. I hate the XML build files. Groovy allows
> me to script ant, but I figure I should be able to ignore the ant
> dependency and write a build toolkit in Java and Groovy.  Haven't
> thought about it much, but I'm thinking each target could be a Groovy
> closure. The build file is a groovy script that extends a Java (or
> Groovy) class and manages a bunch of closures/targets in some way.
>
> That will probably be my next project. :-D
>
> Another item is TestNG. This was a framework that I chose to never use
> because of the XML scripts, its supposed to be the 'next generation'
> to JUnit tests. (http://www.beust.com/testng/). I have issues with
> JUnit though. I'm thinking I can do the same thing and overcome
> TestNG's "limitation" (XML) by writing test framework in groovy.
> Happily, this has already been done
> (http://groovy.codehaus.org/Unit+Testing). But I like TestNG's
> annotation-based configuration, so maybe someday I'll expand the
> Groovy Unit Testing to include that. It could happen.
>
> I'm also thinking of ways to code XHTML in GroovyMarkup so I never
> have to look at another angle bracket ever again!
>
> Thoughts? Anybody want to defend XML?
>
> Dusty
>
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