Re: [xml-dev] M as the next XML?

[Eric Bréchemier <eric.brechemier@gmail.com>]

  Hi Nicolas,

I think you're on to something: I tend to see a lot of Java code with
nested tree structures for Data Objects, all defined in distinct
Classes with fields, and constructors, and getters and setters, which
make me miss the generic syntax of XML or JSON.

Now might be the time to take both XML and Java to the next level, or
maybe I am just suffering from frequent switching between Javascript
and Java.

Cheers,

Eric


On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 10:28 AM, nico <ndebeiss@gmail.com> wrote:
> I think there is still a lot more to do in order to break the wall between
> documents and objects !
>
> I dream of a language where we could do :
>
> data.txt :
> person { name = "john", surname = "dow" }
>
> data = load("data.txt");
>
> That load creating both the squeleton of classes, and its instances.
>
> And then access/modify data as if it was a document :
>
> add(data, "//person[name = 'john'][surname = 'dow']", account = "54335");
>
> All that expression "//person[name = 'john'][surname = 'dow']" as a string,
> that way that could be generically generated from a database, or a
> configuration file.
>
> You could say that is already what is possible in XML, but still lots of
> developpers will ask you to have a real object tree, like :
>
> var persons = data.person;
> foreach person in persons {
>     if (person.name == "john" and person.surname == "dow") {
>          person.account = "54335";
>     }
> }
>
> See all the marshaller/unmarshaller APIs you find on the web in order to do
> that ! I do not think I will ever understand why people are so fan of those
> generated POJO objects.
>
> I only saw a bit about JSON, but it seems they made some steps in that
> direction.
>
> Regards
> Nico
> http://debeissat.nicolas.free.fr/programming.php
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