[Biojava-l] Re: unexpected behavior in StAX, StringElementHandlerBase

[Michael L. Heuer]

On Tue, 18 Sep 2001, Christopher Pickslay wrote:

> All of the StAXContentHandlerBase implementations appear to share this
> problem. They each contain a StringBuffer field that is initialized along
> with the class, rather than in startElement(). So not only will they cause
> this behavior with sequential elements, but it means a
> StAXContentHandlerBase instance cannot be re-used. I'd recommend
> initializing the StringBuffer in startElement(), as that would be the
> expected behavior.

is it better to re-initialize the StringBuffer, or call
sb.delete(0,sb.length()) after calling setXValue(String)?

I don't have a good profiling tool, so I'm just guessing here...

> As to how to treat child elements, I'd recommend having
> StringElementHandlerBase throw an exception (as it currently does). But it
> would be a good idea to add a MixedElementHandlerBase class which allows
> for the retrieval of character data and allows the implementor to handle
> delegation for child elements.

I like this idea.

If you're dealing with an xml document that has been validated against a
DTD or a schema, you shouldn't need the mixed implementation, but it
seems like it'd be nice to have.

   michael