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Firefox/Chromium have well implemented(?) parsers. Then why are parsers like lxml and other such parsers being developed with so much effort put into it?

Aren't they re-inventing the wheel? Or are they solving a different problem? Can't parsers in browsers be made into standalone libraries?

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    People down-voting should really read what a specific site stands for: programmers.stackexchange.com/about, or at least think a little.
    – Aby James
    Commented Mar 11, 2012 at 20:29
  • I amn't sure about the question. But one possible answer would be that Firefox/Chromium just don't parse HTML/XML alone; they parse CSS and JavaScript too (and other plugins) for processing. And XML isn't just used on the web alone. Its a data interchange format and there are separate technologies to deal with it (there are XML databases). So a full-fledged XML parser is necessary to deal with non-browser data. You might now ask why not abstract the XML of the browser. Good question but need to go through the technical docs to understand whether its possible.
    – Ubermensch
    Commented Mar 12, 2012 at 8:29

1 Answer 1

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lxml is not a new parser, it's a Python binding for libxml2 and libxslt. Both libraries were originally build for Gnome, have been around for quite a while and are used by numerous projects, either directly or via language specific bindings like lxml.

Chrome uses both (check chrome://credits/) and Firefox uses Expat1 (check: about:license) which similarly to libxml is a standalone library. Both browsers use standalone open source libraries that are quite popular, so there isn't really much re-inventing the wheel going on here.

1 Thanks Wladimir Palant

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    Firefox uses the Expat parser for XML parsing, see about:license. As to XSLT - it seems to be an own development.
    – Wladimir Palant
    Commented Mar 11, 2012 at 20:21
  • I do know what lxml is and its history, as I am working with it now. After reading: html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/internals/howbrowserswork, it got me thinking the relative merits of parsers used in browsers and the other libraries.
    – Aby James
    Commented Mar 11, 2012 at 20:35
  • @AbyCodes Well if you knew lxml is not a parser, then I really don't understand your question....
    – yannis
    Commented Mar 11, 2012 at 20:40
  • @Yanni Rizos : 'lxml is not a new parser'. Your answer too paints a broad stroke, doesn't it? let's not be too pedantic here, and see the question for what it is; which is the relative merits and the 'why' of parsers in browers vs the other parsers, or 'toolkits' that make use of it.
    – Aby James
    Commented Mar 11, 2012 at 21:20
  • @AbyCodes I still don't get it. lxml is a binding toolkit, the only thing it does is offer a Python binding for libxml, which is the same parser Chrome uses. Firefox uses Expat, another widely used library, there isn't such a thing as a "browser parser", at least not when we are discussing open source browsers.
    – yannis
    Commented Mar 11, 2012 at 21:35

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