Recommendations for books on Python and XML

[enjoylife_95135]

Hi,
I'm looking for recommendations for Python/XML books. Amazon.com had 2 relevant books, Python&XML by Christopher Jones (from O'Reilly) and XML processing with Python by Sean McGrath.The O'Reilly book seemed to have better reviews.

But it concerns me that both books are rather old! Does anyone have any newer references? Otherwise does the relative age of the books (+3 years) really matter?

About myself, I'm a C and Perl programmer from a while back. I'm learning Python and I want to get started with using it to manipulate XML. I don't know much about XML either, but I'm familiar with HTML.

Thanks!
S

 

[Arto Viitanen]

enjoylife> Hi, I'm looking for recommendations for Python/XML enjoylife> books. Amazon.com had 2 relevant books, Python&XML by Christopher enjoylife> Jones (from O'Reilly) and XML processing with Python by Sean enjoylife> McGrath.The O'Reilly book seemed to have better reviews.

enjoylife> But it concerns me that both books are rather old! Does anyone enjoylife> have any newer references? Otherwise does the relative age of the enjoylife> books (+3 years) really matter?

Python has SAX and DOM. Since they are language independent standards, you could use any XML documentation for programming and then check some Python manuals (like http://www.python.org/doc/2.3.4/lib/lib.html). The XML documents are normally for Java, but I guess there is no big difference.

 

[Ron Stephens]

I liked Python & XML, by Christopher A. Jones and Fred L. Drake, Jr., an O'Reilly book. I have posted a book review here www.awaretek.com/book.html

I have not read the McGrath book, XML Processing with Python, but scanning it in the bookstore it also looked pretty good.

Ron Stephens

 

[Cameron Laird]

I liked Python & XML, by Christopher A. Jones and Fred L. Drake, Jr., an O'Reilly book. I have posted a book review here www.awaretek.com/book.html

I have not read the McGrath book, XML Processing with Python, but scanning it in the bookstore it also looked pretty good.

Ron Stephens

Sean's book *is* good, if dated, at least for some uses. Some people with an interest in XML and Python will find that *Text Processing in Python* <URL: http://gnosis.cx/TPiP/ > is ideal: thorough, rich, interesting, and accurate.

 

[enjoylife_95135]

Cool. I went with your recommendation and picked up the Jones/Drake book from the bookstore. The customer reviews for the McGrath book on amazon.com weren't too good BTW, which was another factor in my decision. The O'Reilly book had 2 great reviews and 1 bad one.

Since you seem to enjoy reviewing books, I'd be interested in your opinion of:
http://www.diveintopython.org

Thanks!
S

 

[Uche Ogbuji]

Cool. I went with your recommendation and picked up the Jones/Drake book from the bookstore.

In that case you might want to browse

http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/12/11/py-xml.html

Also, I have a brief discussion of books at the start of

http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/09/18/py.html

Overall, see also

http://www.xml.com/pub/at/24
http://uche.ogbuji.net/akara/nodes/2003-01-01/pyxml-akara?xslt=/akara/akara.xslt

Good luck.

 

[enjoylife_95135]

Thank you so much for your input. I will be sure to follow your column carefully. Lots of fun catching up to do now

Regards,
S