Chapter 7. Converting CSV Files to and from XML, Revisited

From Mayfield ^[*] to San Jose and back

^[*] Mayfield, USA, was the home of the Cleaver family on the "Leave It to Beaver" show.

This chapter presents an evolution of the CSV utilities developed in Chapters 2 and 3. It builds on the generalized approach presented in Chapter 6 and adds functionality such as handling multiple logical documents in one physical CSV file. This chapter also presents the first instance of a more formal approach to grammar analysis.

This and the next two chapters present the evolution of our techniques for converting to and from XML and legacy file formats. Each chapter presents two utilities: one to convert the legacy format to XML and the other to convert it from XML. The chapters retain the overall organization presented earlier, compressed a bit to handle both types of conversion. Having presented the general DOM programming approaches in Chapters 2 and 3, we can now focus on overall functional and design aspects. In doing so we find that the two types of conversions (CSV files to and from XML) have many things in common. Hence, it makes sense to discuss them in the same chapter.

In all three chapters we will start with general user information, followed by design, and finally the implementation in Java and C++. Sections deal with converting to XML, converting from XML, and general considerations that apply to both situations.