the reference of the content of XML element

[mavis]

the reference of the content of XML element

In XSD, how can I specify the content of an element refers to the
content of another element in an xml file?

Thanks a lot!

[Joe Kesselman]

mavis wrote:

In XSD, how can I specify the content of an element refers to the
content of another element in an xml file?

Make the value a keyref or idref to that other element? Or make the
value an XPath which can be used to find that element?

--
() ASCII Ribbon Campaign | Joe Kesselman
/\ Stamp out HTML e-mail! | System architexture and kinetic poetry

[mavis]

Thanks a lot ,

Could you instruct how to refer to another element if it is not key or
unique by using xpath?

Joe Kesselman wrote:

mavis wrote:

In XSD, how can I specify the content of an element refers to the
content of another element in an xml file?

Make the value a keyref or idref to that other element? Or make the
value an XPath which can be used to find that element?

--
() ASCII Ribbon Campaign | Joe Kesselman
/\ Stamp out HTML e-mail! | System architexture and kinetic poetry

[Joe Kesselman]

mavis wrote:

Could you instruct how to refer to another element if it is not key or
unique by using xpath?

An XPath is a description of how to find information within a document
-- a simple query operation, if you want to look at it that way.

It's up to the environment to say which document; there's no reason your
system can't use an XPath within a doc to refer to another part of that
doc. XSLT stylesheets sometimes do exactly this, examining themselves to
(for example) do a table lookup. In XSLT, any XPath starting with a call
to the no-arguments version of the document() function is a request to
search the stylesheet document.

Of course, actually following the XPath to the node it refers to will
require running an XPath interpreter, giving it the approrpiate context
information. The TrAX APIs are one semi-standardized way of doing that
in Java; DOM Level 3 also introduces its own XPath API.

--
() ASCII Ribbon Campaign | Joe Kesselman
/\ Stamp out HTML e-mail! | System architexture and kinetic poetry

[mavis]

Thanks. I mean how can we deifne this in the schema file? For example,
in the XSD file, set the default value of an element to be the content
from another element??

Thanks!
Joe Kesselman wrote:

mavis wrote:

Could you instruct how to refer to another element if it is not key or
unique by using xpath?

An XPath is a description of how to find information within a document
-- a simple query operation, if you want to look at it that way.

It's up to the environment to say which document; there's no reason your
system can't use an XPath within a doc to refer to another part of that
doc. XSLT stylesheets sometimes do exactly this, examining themselves to
(for example) do a table lookup. In XSLT, any XPath starting with a call
to the no-arguments version of the document() function is a request to
search the stylesheet document.

Of course, actually following the XPath to the node it refers to will
require running an XPath interpreter, giving it the approrpiate context
information. The TrAX APIs are one semi-standardized way of doing that
in Java; DOM Level 3 also introduces its own XPath API.

--
() ASCII Ribbon Campaign | Joe Kesselman
/\ Stamp out HTML e-mail! | System architexture and kinetic poetry

[Joe Kesselman]

mavis wrote:

Thanks. I mean how can we deifne this in the schema file? For example,
in the XSD file, set the default value of an element to be the content
from another element??

No can do. This is something the application needs to deal with, not the
schema. Schemas are best thought of as constraining and typechecking
documents; copying a value from one place to another is outside their scope.
--
() ASCII Ribbon Campaign | Joe Kesselman
/\ Stamp out HTML e-mail! | System architexture and kinetic poetry