Re: [xsl] XPath engines for Java

Subject: Re: [xsl] XPath engines for Java
From: Johannes Döbler <jd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 11:59:00 +0100
Hello,

Here are some informations about the XPath engine of jd.xslt.
It's main purpose is really to help implement the XSLT processor, but it could be used as a standalone library too, since all needed classes are accessible. (Beware: the current documentation and tool support for standalone use is rudimentary).


The following steps can be performed:
- Instantiate a XPath parser and construct a XPath Expression object from an expression string
- Print out an expression string from a Expression object
- Evaluate a Expression for a XPathContext (defining the context node, etc.)


The XPath library provides an own implementation of the XPath tree model which is designed for fast and efficient expression evaluation.
This tree model is also the base for the XSLT engine. Naturally this limits the use as a standalone XPath library since it will not allow you directly to evaluate XPath expressions on a DOM tree.
But even DOM input would be possible since there exists an (unpublished) XPath to DOM bridge to support DOM tree input.


(sorry for answering so late, but these days I'm always 300 messages behind)

Johannes Döbler


At 19:00 18.03.2002 -0500, you wrote:
I'm working on the XPath chapter of Processing XML with Java,
http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xmljava/

So far the chapter covers Saxon, Xalan-J, Jaxen, and DOM 3 XPath. Does
anyone know of any other XPath processors I should look at? I looked at
jd.xslt, but it doesn't appear to be set up to be used for pure XPath
search, as opposed to XSLT transforms. (XSLT will be covered in the next
chapter, mostly via TrAX.) Oracle seems to offer even less access to its
XPath internals. Can anyone think of any other XPath engines for Java I
should check out? Thanks.

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| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx | Writer/Programmer |
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