I finally stuck a fork in XML::Atom::SimpleFeed and shipped it. It took ten entire months because I completely rewrote its innards no less than six times:
- First I switched it to inside-out object style and SAX-based output generation;
- then I reverted to a hash-based object where instead of storing all the data in instance variables, I generated SAX events immediately, with the option to buffer them in a spool which would eventually be played back to a real SAX writer – all this to cope with the fact that the API as designed wasn’t well suited for streaming output;
- then I got sick of SAX and stopped caring about streaming, but wanted a more declarative approach, so I designed a model based on XML::LibXML in which I cloned and walked pre-parsed XML snippets, dispatching based on attributes in a private namespace (talk about boiling the ocean);
- then I switched to a scalar reference for the object, to which I appended output from a
CGI.pm instance that I had ritually abused to make it make my desired XML for me;
- until I had sickened myself enough that I resigned to writing my own minimal XML writer, around which time I also decided to restructure both the code and docs to closely follow the way the RFC 4287 document flows, which finally brought some clarity to the code layout;
- and lastly, I broke the 0.7 API to make it both simpler/prettier on the outside and saner to implement on the inside.
All this on a limited supply of spare tuits.
I need to work on not letting perfect be the enemy of good; it would have been much better to just ship something, anything, as soon as possible, rather than stagnate – if only seemingly – for almost a year.
But at long last, the CPAN has a module with which you can generate Atom 1.0 with minimal fuss. It took Long Enough. Share and enjoy.
Thanks!
Dom2 on 2006-06-05T08:12:58
After being exposed to XML::Atom in order to write
subatom, I'm enourmously happy to see a sane alternative. I'll be switching as soon as I get a moment.
-Dom
Re:Thanks!
Aristotle on 2006-06-05T09:36:00
Woo, so I’ll be scoring my first is_prereq too! ;-)
