CLDR File

Contents

  1. 1 Introduction
  2. 2 Input
  3. 3 Output
  4. 4 Usage

Introduction

CLDR File is a workhorse for CLDR tools. It has grown and changed over the years, without a serious rearchitecture, so there are oddities in its usage and construction that we'll try to describe here.

The CLDR File is basically a representation of an XML file as a set of <key, value> pairs, where the key is a path, and the value is the element value at the path. This structure allows the XML file to use inheritance, and allows it to be modified without worrying about the exact structure. When a <key,value> pair is added, the CLDR file will make sure that the written form of the resulting XML file is syntactically correct.

Because CLDR File incorporates inheritance, and because the data source may be a database and not just in-memory storage, the actual contents are in a separate object called XMLSource. That object has all of the inheritance logic in it, but it is closely coupled to the CLDR File.

The structure is a bit more complicated than just a <path,value> pair:
  1. For inheritance, the path removes attributes that don't count for the purposes of inheritance. So there is a separate mapping from the path to the "full" path, with those attributes. These are only used where necessary. This information is in CLDRFile.isDistinguishing.
  2. There is a separate mapping for comments. This indicates where a comment attaches to an element (before, at, or after). If the CLDR File has been modified to remove the path, then the comment is still printed, but in a manufactured location.
  3. As a CLDR File is input, certain changes may be made to the structure, including the addition of attributes in order to get the ordering correct.
  4. A hack is used for inheritance to get the "count" values to come out right. (We should clean this up).
  5. A by-product of the <key,value> pair nature is that no CLDR XML file can have mixed content: the content of every element is either a value, or a sequence of elements.
Because of these complications, when a new element or attribute is added to the DTD, adjustments have to be made to the code in CLDRFile and other places. (The longer-range plan is to read these out of the supplemental metadata instead.) For details, see Updating DTDs.

Input

When a file is read, the orderedElements value is used to determine which elements are not reordered or inherited. Those elements get an artificial attribute "_q" with an increasing number as they are read.

Output

The write method writes out an XML file.  The ordering is determined by LDMLComparator, which uses the elementOrdering, attributeOrdering, and valueOrdering. These are MapComparators, which provide an ordering based upon specific lists of elements. Those lists are derived programmatically from the DTD, using a tool. [TBD add link]. The value comparison is further tweeked according to the element and attribute, so that, for example, the days of the week come out in the right order. See getAttributeValueComparator.

Certain attributes are suppressed. These are in defaultSuppressionMap.

A MapComparator behaves in the following way.
  1. If both items are in the ordered list, it returns the ordering according to that list. Else if exactly one is, it comes first (TBD check this).
  2. If both items are numeric (all digits), then the ordering is the normal numeric order. Else if exactly one is, it comes first (TBD check this.)
  3. Else return the "natural" comparison: return ((Comparable)a).compareTo(b);

Usage

Normally you iterate through CLDR File with interator(). This returns the paths in random (hashed) order. There are, however, some options that let you iterator through a subset of the paths: only paths that match a prefix string, or those that only match a regular expression. You can also use a comparator (you should use CLDRFile.ldmlComparator) to change the order of iteration. Example:

for (Iterator it = cldrFile.iterator("", CLDRFile.ldmlComparator); it.hasNext();)

  String path = (String) it.next();

  String value = cldrFile.getStringValue(path);

  String fullpath = cldrFile.getFullXPath(path);


The fullpath has the nondistinguished attributes added.
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