About this module

What is this?

This module implements an XML DOM in Scala, based on DOM4J.

How is this different from DOM4J?

• the original DOM4J 1.6.1 Java code got converted to Scala via Scalagen and manual changes
• parts of DOM4j not needed for Orbeon Forms purposes were removed
• the class hierarchy was simplified
• unneeded abstractions were removed
• and a lot of further clean-up got done

Why do it?

The reason for doing this are:

• a lot of code in Orbeon Forms uses DOM4J and we don't want to change it all to another DOM implementation
• we want to be able to compile all our code to JavaScript via Scala.js, and this requires Scala sources
• DOM4J is unmaintained (the last release dates back to 2005), so there is not point staying in sync with the original releases
• we have some DOM4j changes which were previously done via clumsy inheritance which we can now simply include

Requirements

• be compatible with our original use of DOM4j (reasonable refactoring allowed)
• be written in Scala
• compile to both JVM and with Scala.js

Non-requirements

• be a general-purpose DOM for others to use (although it probably could be)
• built-in support for DTDs, XPath, XSLT, etc. (XPath support is available from Saxon)

What it supports

• basic DOM types: document, element, etc.
• creation from SAX events
• serialization to SAX events

License and original authors

This code still derives from the original DOM4j so it is mostly released under the DOM4j license (a BSD-style license).

The original authors and contributors of DOM4j, based on @author annotations in the original source, are:

• James Strachan
• Dave White
• Maarten Coene
• Brett Finnell
• Joseph Bowbeer