XML in Love

[Centauri Soldier]

It sure would be nice to have XML in LOVE...

What about this?

http://xerces.apache.org/xerces-c/

[Roland_Yonaba]

Though, there's a lot of Lua libraries for XML manipulation...

Lua XML Parser
LuaXML
LuaExpat
Lpegxmlreader
XML Parser
PureLua XML parser
...

Maybe, given this huge number of Lua XML parsers, it sounds pointless having XML parsing built-in Löve...?

[Robin]

An important reason for not including an XML parser is the incredibly low demand for it.

[kikito]

Have you considered using native Lua instead of XML? Lua is Excellent for expressing raw data, just like xml is. And Lua itself is very easy to parse from LÖVE.

For example, if you wanted to parse something like this:

Code: Select all

<map>
<cell>1</cell>
<cell>2</cell>
</map>

You will have a much easier time if you just encode that data using lua:

Code: Select all

return {
  map = {
    cell = { 1, 2 }
  }
}

You literally need 1 line to parse the second file in LÖVE, and no extra libraries.

If you have a big XML file that you want to parse, consider transforming it using an automated tool to something like JSON. Transforming JSON to Lua shouldn't be very complex.

[Centauri Soldier]

Well, as much as I love pure lua and despite the fact that my entire current project and all of its modules are using lua tables to store data, I still find a need from time to time to use xml. I just wondered if it had been considered and after viewing your answers I can see your logic regarding the low demand for it.