[lxml-dev] XMLParser + XMLFormatter ?

[Stefan Behnel]

Hi,

Andreas requested a new feature that mainly relates to output formatting. The
obvious API for it might be a new keyword argument.

However, since we seem to be getting more and more keyword arguments in the
I/O functions, maybe we should rethink the way we set options on output
methods. Fredrik mentioned the possibility to have an XMLParser that only
wrapps options like this:

    class XMLParser:
        def __init__(self, **options):
            self.options = options

    doc = ET.parse(source, parser=XMLParser(configuration))

What about doing the same with output options? Imagine this:

    class XMLFormatter:
        def __init__(self, xhtml=False, pretty_print=False, indent=4, ...):
            self.options = {} ...

   xml_text = ET.write_str(XMLFormatter(pretty_print=True))

That would give us a nice, symmetric API for input and output options.

If you prefer, you could easily use sublasses to provide different default
arguments:

    class XMLPrettyPrinter(XMLFormatter):
        def __init__(..., pretty_print=True, ...):


Comments?

Stefan