=== Identifying a unique node in a DOM tree ===

[Jonathan Asbell <jonathan.asbell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

If we are to make alterations to a dom tree, and xsl does not actually
identify a node by xpath in a dependable manner (see quote from xsl list
below), is there an XML or DOM implementaion that uniquely identifies a
node?  The purpose is to NOT use a database, but instead a flat xml file and
be able to identify and edit a particular node.


QUOTE FROM SUBSCRIBER OF XSL-LIST
(In response to David Carlisle)

"Be aware that there is no nice way to locate a node by just giving
a path. 
You /can/ construct a path from a node, but that path does NOT uniquely
identify that node gain.

You may have to take into account ordinal (array) positions before your
node path becomes definitive.

This puzzled me a bit when coming from web development. I figured an XML
node could be regarded as an extension of a filesystem path ... until I
tried impimenting it.

Although you probably understand what I mean if I was to indicate a path
like "http://my.xml.com/document.xml#/root/chapter/section";, the fact is
that that notation CANNOT work.

Working backwards from Davids eg, you will see that it will have to be
something like document.xml#/root[0]/chapter[1]/section[1] before it
becomes meaningful.

This may be long-obvious for some on this list, but it blew me away when
I first got around to thinking about this limitation (or gotcha)

.dan.


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