Some XML exam questions

4/09/2006

Inspired by Daniel Lemire's post, if I was teaching a class about XML, the following practical (and interesting) questions would certainly comprise my exam:

1. Given at least 10 blog/link feeds, determine the top ten outbound URLs?
2. Parse an iTunes library file and capture all the unique artist/albums.
3. Given a user's XML file from del.icio.us, determine the top 10 intersecting tags.
4. Scrape a dynamic list from a web site (i.e. the Google Zeitgeist) and serialize a well-formed Atom feed.

You can implement a solution using XML and one scripting language (Perl, Python, Ruby); I have used Python for all of these. I have completed all of these questions and will share my sources with those that take my practical exam and email me answers. There are no awards or prizes, as these are fun and practical bedtime exercises.