[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

xpath without network connection



Hi,

I recently filed bug #337584, about how libxml-xpath-perl fails in the
absense of a network connection when an online DTD is specified in the
file being parsed (the actual failure seems to come from
libxml-parser-perl, perhaps I should have filed the bug there?).

It ends up that I was using xpath in debian/rules to build
php-cache-lite, php-pager, and php-simpletest, all of which need to
extract information from PHP Pear package.xml files. This is done in a
generic way using peark.mk which has already been submitted to cdbs, and
is generically useful for packaging other Pear packages.

Not having received a response from the libxml-xpath-perl maintainer,
and not uncovering any way to avoid this networkless failure through my
own uninformed research, I thought I would see if anyone here could
offer any suggestions on the matter.

While I can always work around this problem by using xmlstarlet, it
somehow appeals to me to actually have a command line xpath utility, and
libxml-xpath-perl is the one that I was able to uncover in Debian.

Further, it strikes me as incorrect for xpath to outright fail when
unable to load the DTD from the network. While it might issue a warning,
it should be possible to nonetheless apply the xpath to the document (as
far as I can tell).

Could someone with a bit more experience than I in the XML/Perl area
please advise me on how to approach this issue? Is there a reasonable
modification that could be made to either libxml-xpath-perl or
libxml-parser-perl, to allow more reasonable (or configurable) behavior
in the absence of a network connection?

thanks,
Charles

-- 
Uncle Rube
Buys tube
One week
Looks sleek
Like sheik
Burma-Shave
http://burma-shave.org/jingles/1930/uncle_rube

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: Digital signature


Reply to: