Re: XPath and find/findAll methods

On Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 11:34 AM, Martin Kadlec <bs-harou@myopera.com>wrote:

> Hello everyone,
> I've noticed that the find/findAll methods are currently being discussed
> and there is one thing that might be a good idea to consider.
>
> Currently, it's quite uncomfortable to use XPath in javascript. The
> document.evalute method has lots of arguments and we have to remember
> plenty of constants to make it work. IE and Opera support selectNodes
> method on NodePrototype, which is really useful, but what's the point in
> using it when it doesn't work in FF/Chrome/Safari.
>

XPath is dead on the web.  Let's leave it that way.

- James


>
> My idea is to combine querySelector/All and selectNodes methods. This
> combination - find/findAll - would make using XPath much easier and it
> might give a good reason to lot's of programmers to use it instead of
> querySelector/All although it's going to be newer technology.
>
> The problem is how to combine the methods, because in some cases it might
> not be clear if the string is xpath or css query. Because CSS queries are
> probably going to be used much more often than xpath it should be easier to
> call the method with CSS query. There is an idea I have but I would be glad
> for any other.
>
> findAll(query, use_xpath):
> CSS: findAll("nav a:first-child");
> XPATH: findAll("//nav/a[1]", true);
>
> Cheers,
> Martin Kadlec
>
>
>