sa*********@montana-riverboats.com wrote:
I often find it useful to refer to elements in an XML document using a
limited XPath construct: the contacentated string of element
names only, from root to any particular node in the XML. Is there a
term for this
idea--for XPaths constructed from concatenated element names, without
attributes
included in any way?
/book[@name="xml_stuff"] ...not what I'm talking about
/book/chapter/paragraph/sentance/ ...this is what I mean, is there a
term for this?
I personnally use the term "Canonical path" ; here is my definition :
==============
Canonical path
The ·canonical path· of a node is an XPath expression that starts
from the root node and descends from child to child until the node
(without using the "*" joker). The sole predicate allowed in a step is
the "indexing predicate", such as [n] where n is a non nul positive
integer ; this predicate is not involved if the step would return a
unique node. For example,
/xcl:active-sheet/xcl:logic[3]/xcl:if[2]/xcl:then/xcl:parse is a valid
·canonical path· . When a node test involved an attribute or an element,
the prefix used is not necessary the same used in the document, for
example when prefixes are redefined ; a canonical path can't be used by
an XPath engine safely if a namespace mapping is not provided.
==============
In order to process a canonical path safely with an XPath engine, I put
such canonical paths in a "path element", that hosts namespace mappings
needed in the expression.
--
Cordialement,
///
(. .)
-----ooO--(_)--Ooo-----
| Philippe Poulard |
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