Frequently Asked Questions


About attoparser


Where does attoparser come from? Is it made or backed by any software company?

attoparser is Open Source Software created in his spare time by a Spanish Software Engineer called Daniel Fernández, who's also the author of other java libraries like thymeleaf, jasypt, op4j or javatuples.

It is neither made nor backed by any software (or any other type of) company, and it is offered to the public totally free of charge, both in binary and in source code forms, under the Apache License 2.0.


Does attoparser offer any type of commercial support?

No, it does not. Commercial support is not offered at the moment, but there is an issue tracking system at your disposal.


Is it stable? Can it be considered production-ready?

Yes, all stable (non-beta) releases can be considered production-ready.


How can I contribute to attoparser?

In many ways:

  • You can write in the issue tracking system (or directly to the Team) with your ideas for improving attoparser.
  • You can contribute some code, write a patch for a new feature or behaviour (please, tell the project admins first about your idea so that effort can be adequately coordinated).
  • You can write articles, reviews, blog posts, etc. about attoparser, showing how it works or how it integrates with other technologies.
  • You can promote attoparser in your company/work and among your colleague developers.

If you want to contribute some code to attoparser, please read first the page on Contributing to attoparser.


General


Is attoparser a SAX parser?

Strictly speaking, no, it isn't, because it does not implement the standard SAX API.

But it is a SAX-style parser in the sense that it works in a similar way to standard SAX parsers, this is, by triggering parsing events like element, attribute, text, document start, etc. so that they can be handled by specifically created handler methods. This contrasts with the way DOM parsers work, which parse entire documents and convert them into DOM (Document Object Model) node trees before returning control to the user.


How can I use a SNAPSHOT release of attoparser?

From time to time, attoparser will produce a snapshot release that will allow you to test new or being-developed features. These are non production ready releases, but will be stable enough for most testing purposes, and will enable you to try new features before they are generally available.

In order to use snapshot releases, you need to add the Sonatype OSS Snapshots repository in your Maven pom.xml file, like this:

<repositories>
  <repository>
    <id>sonatype-nexus-snapshots</id>
    <name>Sonatype Nexus Snapshots</name>
    <url>https://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/snapshots</url>
    <snapshots>
      <enabled>true</enabled>
    </snapshots>
  </repository>
</repositories>

Also, you will have to modify your attoparser dependency/ies to use a snapshot version, which usually consists of the version number of the next release (not the current one), followed by -SNAPSHOT. For example, while 2.0.7.RELEASE is the latest published stable release, snapshots will probably appear under the 2.0.8-SNAPSHOT or maybe 2.1.0-SNAPSHOT version numbers:

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.attoparser</groupId>
  <artifactId>attoparser</artifactId>
  <version>2.0.8-SNAPSHOT</version>
  <scope>compile</scope>
</dependency>