Replacing std.xml

[w0rp]

On Thursday, 29 August 2013 at 09:24:31 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> I think it's great that there's no std.xml, as it implies that 
> nobody using D would use a dumb tech like XML.  Let's keep it 
> that way. :)

JSON is better than XML in every way I can think of. Easier to 
map to data structures in whichever language you're using, much 
smaller in size, less corner cases, etc. However, just saying XML 
is dumb isn't a useful policy. You need ways of parsing XML on 
hand until people stop using it.

On Thursday, 29 August 2013 at 08:15:39 UTC, Robert Schadek wrote:
> On 08/29/2013 09:51 AM, Johannes Pfau wrote:
>> I most points here also apply to std.xml:
>> t Those are not strict
>> requirements though, I just summarized what I remembered from 
>> old
>> discussions.
> I think, this even extends to access to all semi- and 
> structured-data.
> Think csv, sql nosql, you name it. Something which deserves a 
> name like
> Uniform Access. I don't want to care if data is laid out 
> differently. I
> want to define my struct or class mark the members to fill a 
> pass it to
> somebodies code and don't want to care if its xml, sql or 
> whatever.

I'm really not so sure about that kind of approach. Automatic 
serialisation I think works one of two ways. Either you have 
control over the data you're pulling in, and you can change it to 
map more easily to your data structures, or you don't and you 
have to make your data structures more ugly to fit the data 
you're pulling in. I prefer just writing functions that take 
format X and give you in-memory representation Y over automatic 
serialisation stuff. I know it's boring and easy to write 
functions like that, but why can't some things just be boring and 
easy?

This looks like a really popular topic, and it's cool that there 
seem to be quite a few implementations that are close to being 
what we want. I think we're probably not far off just lining up a 
few different implementations and reviewing them all for possible 
inclusion in phobos.