Customer Reviews

XML Processing with Python (with CD-ROM)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

The book spends a lot of time on Python advocacy and tutorial,which is a good thing, but not why I bought it. Turns out the targetaudience of this book is: programmers comfortable with mark-uplanguages in a general sense who haven't programmed in Python before,but are curious. If you already are a python user looking to find outwhat all these acronymns like XML, DTD, XML SCHEMA, XSL, etc. are,you'll find yourself skipping much of the book and coming awaydisappointed. It spends far more time teaching Python than discussingXML's makeup. If you are a power python user looking for XMLprocessing under the hood, it definitely isn't for you.

This bookintroduces pyxie, an XML processing library, along with the basics ofSAX (Simple Api for XML) and DOM (Document Object Model) XMLprocessing techniques in a fairly concise fashion. Armed with aminimal degree of comfort with mark-up languages like HTML or XML, aprogrammer ready to start processing some actual XML files for thefirst time will find good value in this book.

However, I worry thatthe book may frustrate and/or tick off its target audience, i.e.,Python newbies. This is because much of the code developed in the bookseems rushed out. Whatever the case, you are going to have to debugstuff on the CD. Python is easy to debug and this code is not roughgoing, but it can be tedious and time-consuming if it's something youdidn't plan to reckon with. I'm not convinced that this is altogethera bad thing, since it may prove to be a good way for a python newcomerto get intimate with some handy code. I simply want to make you awareof the situation.

Like a lot of pythoneers, I run Solaris, and Ifound that for non-Linux UNICES the CD offers only C source files fora couple of the book's vital tools. I had to find the requiredlibraries on the web and figure out how to come up with makefilesmyself. Again, tedious and time-consuming. A few hints would have beennice. Linux and Windows folks won't have this problem, as thosebinaries are on CD. Some promised Windows stuff never made it on CD...

The first 250 pages of this book are an introduction to Python and XML. 20 of those are screen shots of the Microsoft installer of Python. Every example begins with type <filename> to fill more space. I think he got the choice of typeface from Curious George Rides a Bike (it allows for 25 lines per page). This should have been a 100 page book with no CD since the code on the CD is all outdated.

There are probably 10 or 15 useful pages in this book for someone who knows anything about Python and XML. I was looking for examples about applying style sheets, parsing examples with database connectivity... anything. All the examples he uses can easily be found on the web in a more concise and clear format.

Very little coverage of processing XML documents using Python - plenty of discussion of Python generally, how to use C language utilities to parse XML, how to use awk to modify the output of the C language tools, etc. The book uses a large typeface and includes examples for both Linux and Windows NT screen input/output (which turn out to be nearly identical), so there's not nearly as much content as you might imagine from the page count. I'm relatively new to XML and Python and I spotted two errors in the examples within the first 100 pages. There are two appendices which sound like they're supposed to explain Python to Java and Perl programmers but turn out to be feature comparisons. That's great fodder for flamewars about language superiority, but not a big help for people with experience in other languages seeking a Python jump-start. People who shell out $() for a book on XML and Python don't need a sales pitch about why XML and Python are good choices.

I think this book could have been saved with some help from a good editor; unfortunately, that wasn't done. I can't comment on the CD as I haven't opened its envelope, as this book is being returned as totally unsatisfactory, which I don't do very often.

This book has two audiences. People who need to use XML but haven't decided how to process it, and people who use Python and want or need to know about XML. Both will find this book meets their needs.

It lives in the same space as Brett McLaughlin's "Java and XML", and tries to answer an important question: how do I harness the possibilities of XML for my applications? In answering that question, you may find this book a revelation. Java has stolen most of the XML programming hype in the last year. However Python is becoming an increasingly popular choice for programming on the server. And Python crucially has far better text manipulation facilities than Java. The author combines this inherent ability with specialised XML tools (and occasionally UNIX ones!), leaving one in no doubt that Python is a serious (and in many cases superior) option over Java and Perl for building XML applications quickly and easily.

This is not a book written by someone who learned their subject matter while writing their tome. He knows his material, in particular XML.

Some minor caveats. The author pushes his own tools somewhat, but that's ok, they're free; and the Python community hasn't fully converged on de facto tools as of yet. This is not a neutral book: the author states in no uncertain terms that Python is the best language for processing XML. The book is slow to start: if you know your way around Python and or XML you'll skim the first 60 pages. None of these are showstoppers though.

This book proves that a good publisher makes a difference, and that prentice hall does not qualify. I've never seen a computer book that contains so many errors. Combined with the hideous layout of the goldfarb series, this should be enough to keep you far away from it. BTW: i've added a second star, because valuable stuff is hidden in it; you just have to work too hard to get there.

If you're new to python, buy learning python and programming python instead. if you want to apply xml with python, use the web to learn more. Only buy this book if it's *deeply* discounted, or if you're looking for job as a book editor. Otherwise, you'll end up rewarding incompetent publishing.

There are some useful nuggets in this book, but there is also a lot of material that doesn't directly relate to processing XML. The author spends an inordinate amount of space discussing things like AWK, filename globbing on Windows, installing software, and other irrelevant items. The software tools used as examples in the book were written for earlier versions of Python and the Python XML libraries; they do not work with the current releases of Python and PyXML, and no updates are available on the author's web site.

Modern XML programmers should be using the SAX and DOM api's for their projects, and the related standards. Those subjects should have been the foundation for this book.

Instead the author spends lots of time talking about some "pyxie" utility that reforms XML into some intermediate line oriented ascii format for processing. He even does system calls to assist in processing. If SAX and DOM didn't exist, then yes, I suppose this is how you'd do it. This would be OK for 10% of the book, as an introduction, but not as the primary tool.

To be fair, he does talk about SAX and DOM in a couple chapters. The coverage was light and the examples weren't great.

And no discussion of XSLT or XPath? Nor of schemas? To be fair the copyright says 2000, so this may have been written in 1999, so some of those items were not around or popular back then. But if the book is updated, these would need to be added.

I think readers might do better to grab one of the Java books for now, and try to translate to Python in their head I guess. I agree with one of the other reviewers that there's a bit of filler in the book, though not as bad as some other books.

On the plus side the author is very polite and supportive and would be comforting to newer programmers.

I also like the way he keeps extending his xgrep project to have more and more features; it is nice to see an author show a large project evolving (I just kept wishing it was using DOM).

When you try to learn a language you often get that "so what do I do next" problem. You know the syntax but dont have a domain within which to apply it. This book gives all the knowledge you need to get up and running with the language (you really dont need another Python book to start) with the EXCELLENT benefit of giving you a understanding of how to use Python for XML processing.

Makes a good addition to both the Python and XML book collections.

Tom

I certainly can't go so far as to say this book is for everyone, but I think it does an excellent job of presenting the material to the target audience. You need to have some XML knowledge under our belt and a programmer's desire to learn the strengths of Python.

The CD that comes with this book contains all the code examples from the book, Python distributions for Unix/Linux/Win, the major Python XML tools/modules, as well the MySQL DBMS and the required Python modules for accessing this DB.

The author goes beyond focusing on the major tools, focusing on some of the small tricks you can use to search and check XML documents via the command line. He also covers the major programming interfaces that have become available, comparing and contrasting them, as well as showing how they can be incorporated into Python programming. If you've not had a chance to become acquainted with the MySQL DBMS, you also learn how to use it, in relationship to XML document processing and how to access it with Python.

Some of the Python code/command line examples are extremely simple, but I think he is quick enough in get to the heart of the subject and does a great job at covering a wide breathe of material. The book has left me with a bigger picture of XML, equiped to start processing XML, and excited about doing further research on this growing technology.

I haven't clue what this book is about and how it relates to real life problem solving. I use SAX2 and DOM parsers daily and they are an integral part of my software projects. I fond this book to be a total waste of time and money and I would not, could not recommend it. The O'Reilly Book on the other hand it a gem