News You Can Bruise for 2004 August 31 (entry 3)

(4) Tue Aug 31 2004 23:03 PST One Piece At A Time: There's lots of Python code that pings weblogs.com, but I couldn't find a Python library for the other side of the equation; one that parses the big XML file of recent pings. That's why I developed the Ass-Kicking Laser Algorithm, which does that very thing. Even with the paucity of things you could conceivably do with the weblogs.com XML file, I think it has more options than are wise. Once I start actually using it I may trim it down. But like I say, one piece at a time.

The name is Kris'. He came up with it in 1998 when I was complaining that the algorithms I was learning about in class didn't live up to their cool names, like the gift wrapping algorithm and Graham's Scan. Since any interesting name I could give this library would set the user up for an anticlimax, I figured I'd go all the way. Thanks, Kris.

In retrospect, though, Graham's Scan is pretty cool.

Comments:

Posted by Fredrik at Wed Sep 01 2004 12:36

Couldn't find a library for parsing XML files? Python's got nearly as many XML libraries as it has web framworks. Where were you looking? ;-)

Posted by Leonard at Wed Sep 01 2004 12:55

Couldn't find a library for parsing that specific, frequently-parsed XML file. :) Is there a general rule that you don't do that? I figured from all the special-purpose libraries to access specific XML-RPC APIs it would also be appropriate to write a special-purpose document parser.

Posted by Fredrik at Sun Sep 05 2004 14:26

Well, I use to say that if you need a library to parse a dead-simple XML format, there's something wrong with your XML library (XML-RPC is a lot tricker, and there is something wrong with xmllib ;-).

On the other hand, you did add some useful features on top of the parsing itself, and the name is most excellent.

Posted by Leonard at Tue Sep 07 2004 17:54

Hopefully AKLa will better justify its existence now that version 1.1 knows how to process the relative timestamps.