Re: [xml-dev] Best way to create an XML document

["Martin Gallagher" <speeple@googlemail.com>]

Depends on the requirements IMO.

Creating via DOM can advantageous if further manipulation via the DOM is required. This will remove the overhead of creating a string and the initial parse to a DOM object.

If you data source is correctly encoded and standardised you can create XML documents more efficiently by using strings.

1) Creating a XML string by hand can become cumbersome, if XML is
huge. Maintaining the correct parent child relationship for a huge
document can be difficult, if done by hand (imagine a document of size
50 MB). This would lead to difficult debugging. Using a DOM API can do
this inherently in memory.

Program logic can overcome the "by-hand" issue.
 

2) It's difficult to remember correct XML name conventions if done by hand.

for e.g., <9abc> is an invalid XML name (because it starts with a number).

There are more rules for XML names.

Using DOM API does this automatically.

 
I guess this depends entirely on experience of the developer in regards to XML.

3) Using DOM API can check well-formedness of entities (like, &abc;
etc). Doing this by hand in a string can become difficult.

This certainly is a major benefit; like a interpretted language you get to see where you go wrong as you're constructing the DOM object.