RE: [xpath] non-document root nodes

As Mike outlined, we spend a long time on this design to avoid potential
confusion.

Regarding your last question: A DocumentFragment could (and probably
should) imply a (pseudo)-document. Thus you can use /.

Best regards
Michael

> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-qt-comments-request@w3.org 
> [mailto:public-qt-comments-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of 
> Elliotte Harold
> Sent: Friday, February 25, 2005 7:14 AM
> To: public-qt-comments@w3.org
> Subject: [xpath] non-document root nodes
> 
> 
> Section 3.2 of XPath 2.0 states:
> 
> A "/" at the beginning of a path expression is an 
> abbreviation for the initial step fn:root(self::node()) treat 
> as document-node() (this is true even if the "/" is the 
> entire path expression). The effect of this initial step is 
> to begin the path at the root node of the tree that contains 
> the context node. If the context item is not a node, a type 
> error is raised.[err:XP0020] At evaluation time, if the root 
> node above the context node is not a document node, a dynamic 
> error is raised.[err:XP0050]
> 
> A "//" at the beginning of a path expression is an 
> abbreviation for the initial steps fn:root(self::node()) 
> treat as document-node()/descendant-or-self::node()/. The 
> effect of these initial steps is to establish an initial node 
> sequence that contains the root of the tree in which the 
> context node is found, plus all nodes descended from this 
> root. This node sequence is used as the input to subsequent 
> steps in the path expression. If the context item is not a 
> node, a type error is raised.[err:XP0020] At evaluation time, 
> if the root node above the context node is not a document 
> node, a dynamic error is raised.[err:XP0050]
> 
> 
> I'm concerned about the last two sentences of each of these 
> paragraphs.
> 
> In XOM, in XPath 1, I've found it useful to query trees with 
> no document nodes above them by inserting a sort of 
> pseudo-document node. This makes expressions like /a/b/c 
> meaningful, whether or not the context node is in a document. 
> However, this pseudo-root is never actually returned. For 
> instance the expression / would return an empty list rather 
> than this pseudo-root. I'm just not sure an error should be 
> raised here. The principle of least surprise would seem to 
> dictate that users can always begin expressions that use / 
> and // regardless of the context node, especially since most 
> of those expressions will not actually be trying to find the 
> root node, just work down from there to something else in the tree.
> 
> Practically, in the case of DOM, I wonder what happens if the 
> root node is a DocumentFragment rather than a Document. 
> perhaps that's just treated as another document node for 
> XPath 2.0's purpose?
> 
> --
> Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo@metalab.unc.edu XML in a 
> Nutshell 3rd Edition Just Published!
> http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xian3/
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0596007647/cafeaulaitA/
ref=nosim
> 
>

Received on Friday, 25 February 2005 19:42:02 UTC