Scala XMLLoader as ContentHandler

Scala makes it very easy to handle XML but does not provide any means to interact with the standard Java XML tooling. XML can only be created using literals or parsing the string representation. The internal implementation of XML.load uses a ContentHandler. Exposing that ContentHandler would allow Scala XML to be created from a SAX pipeline, which is half of what is required for full integration The following class provides the necessary implementation

import scala.xml.factory.XMLLoader
import scala.xml._
import org.xml.sax._
import org.xml.sax.helpers.DefaultHandler

class Loader extends DefaultHandler  with   XMLLoader[Elem]{
   val newAdapter = adapter
   def value = newAdapter.rootElem.asInstanceOf[Elem]

   override def characters( ch:Array[Char],start:Int,length:Int) {
     newAdapter.characters(ch,start,length)
   }
   override def endDocument() {
     newAdapter.scopeStack.pop
   }
   override def endElement(uri:String,localName:String, qName:String){
     newAdapter.endElement(uri,localName,qName)
   }    
   override def processingInstruction(target:String,  data:String){
     newAdapter.processingInstruction(target,data)
   }
   override def startDocument(){
     newAdapter.scopeStack push TopScope
   }    
   override def startElement(uri:String,localName:String, qName:String,atts:Attributes){
       newAdapter.startElement(uri,localName,qName,atts)
   }       
}

Illustrated by

import java.io._
import javax.xml.parsers._
import javax.xml.transform._
import javax.xml.transform.sax.SAXResult

val transformerFactory = TransformerFactory.newInstance
val xformer = transformerFactory.newTransformer
val xl = new Loader
xformer.transform(new StreamSource(new StringBufferInputStream("""<X><y/>fdgfd</X>""")), new SAXResult(xl))
println(xl.value)

Richard Searle

Scala XMLLoader as ContentHandler