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Xidel

  • Q: I'd like to participate. How do I begin?

    • 0

      Learn XQuery...


         — BeniBela · 2 years ago
    • [X]

      • Tip:

        Talk about diverse kinds of contributions. Include URLs if relevant (we'll automatically linkify them).

      • Examples:

        Here's how to download and patch our codes…

        Read about our death-defying mailing list and momentous IRC channel at http://lobstermag.net.

  • Q: Other than writing code, how can I contribute?

    • 0
      Post example usages

      Well, you have to write some code, since Xidel/XQuery is a programming language itself.

      It is an incredible powerful language that can do a lot of querying tasks with a single line, but people do not know that and do not know XQuery.

      So if someone posts a long bash script for a webpage, you can show them how to replace the entire script with a single call of Xidel.

      Or if you have a webpage that you want to parse, or automate some uploading task, you can do it with Xidel, and show people how you did it.


         — BeniBela · 2 years ago
    • [X]

      • Tip:

        Discuss documentation, testing, webmastering, and/or publicity.

        Include URLs if relevant (we'll automatically linkify them).

      • Example:

        We need people to download version 0.4.5 and make sure the frobulator still frobulates correctly.

  • Q: What's a good bug for a newcomer to tackle?

    • 0
      Add a math layer wrapper

      XQuery 3 has a lot of mathematical functions, math:cos, math:log, math:sqrt, ...
      (http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath-functions-31/#trigonometry)

      Xidel does not have them, but Pascal does.

      So you need to write a wrapper for each function, that calls the corresponding Pascal function and add it to Xidel. (you probably can use my Pascal meta programming language to automatically generate most of these functions, like here https://github.com/benibela/bbutils/blob/master/bbutils_template.pas#L124-L140 )

      It is trivial (except possible for some boundary conditions), but has very low priority, since I doubt many people want to calculate some cosine when parsing a webpage.


         — BeniBela · 2 years ago
    • [X]

      • Tip:

        Many projects have good small tasks that can teach newcomers how the project works. Now's your chance to share one of them!

        Include URLs if relevant (we'll automatically linkify them).

      • Example:

        Someone could improve the photo upload dialog box so that it lets you resize the photo before sending it to the web.

  • Q: What is a bug or issue with Xidel that you've been putting off, neglecting, or just plain avoiding?

    • 0


         — lmpanellawile · 2 years ago
    • 0
      Implement a format integer function

      Converting an integer to a string sounds like an easy task, but the W3 always overcomplicates everything: http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath-functions-31/#formatting-integers

      Implementing this all is quite a daunting task, but necessary for full XQuery compliance.

      This implementation can be done in XQuery or Pascal, whereby latter would be more efficient.


         — BeniBela · 2 years ago
    • 0
      Implement a format number function

      Then we need a function to format decimals or floating point numbers: http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath-functions-31/#formatting-numbers


         — BeniBela · 2 years ago
    • 0
      Implement a format date function

      And finally a function to format datetimes: http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath-functions-31/#formatting-dates-and-times


         — BeniBela · 2 years ago
    • [X]

      • Examples:

        I don't know how to get started with internationalizing my app.

        Bug 392 about printing was filed five years ago, and I don't even know if printing still works.

        I want help from a C coder writing a Maildir patch for Alpine.

      • Note:

        If this issue was formally filed on the web, be sure to include the URL.

What else do you want to talk about?

About Xidel

(logo)

Xidel is a command line tool to download and extract data from HTML/XML pages as well as JSON APIs. It also is an interpreter for the Turing-complete languages XPath/XQuery/JSONiq and a replacement for the wget/curl/sed/awk/jq/xmlstarlet/xpath tools.

from the profile of BeniBela

The code is mostly written in XQuery, Pascal.

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