xml-dev - Re: Simple DOM question

[Warren Hedley <w.hedley@auckland.ac.nz>]

Eric Bohlman wrote:
> 
> Such a common problem that the solution to it is built into the definition
> of XML itself (and XML inherited it from SGML).  Just declare the child
> document as an entity in your internal DTD subset (<!ENTITY childElement
> SYSTEM "childElement.xml">) and then reference it as %childElement;
> instead of creating a special element type to represent inclusion.  That
> way the parser will transparently perform the inclusion rather than
> requiring the application logic to do it.
> 
> I've noticed in recent days a tendency for people to propose using XLink
> or application-specific linking mechanisms to accomplish tasks that could
> just as well be handled by the entity mechanism.  Let's not forget our
> roots.

You're right of course. I'm aware of this way of doing things. My example
was probably a bit too simplistic. Say for example that we had some other
information about the childElement declared within the parent:

<rootElement>
  <link-childElement name="bob" href="childElement.xml" type="foobar">
    <description>Some Info</description>
  </link-childElement>
</rootElement>

and I wanted the specified <description> and @type attributes to over-ride
the corresponding fields in "childElement.xml". As far as I know, this kind
of behaviour is not supported in basic XML, but my application has to take
of this itself.

Any thoughts? Thanks.


-- 
Warren Hedley
Department of Engineering Science
Auckland University
New Zealand

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