XOM API for Processing XML with Java

["O'Brien-Strain, Eamonn" <eob AT exch.hpl.hp.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Elliotte Rusty Harold [mailto:elharo AT metalab.unc.edu]
[...]
> 2. I saw that when XPath was eventually added, an Attribute node 
> class would be necessary. What does Sparta do when someone passes it 
> an XPath that selects an Attribute node or nodes?

In the Sparta XPath subset it is possible to statically determine, just by 
parsing the XPath expression, whether it selects an element or a string.  
There are different xpathSelect*() methods for returning Elements and 
Strings.  For example:

   Element foo = doc.xpathSelectElement( "/Top[@g='ggg']/Foo[4]"      );
   String  bar = doc.xpathSelectString(  "/Top[@g='ggg']/Foo[4]/@bar" );

There are also versions that return iterators over Elements or Strings -- in 
the case of multiple matches the above methods return the first match.

The methods throw an exception when the wrong type of XPath is passed to them.

__
Eamonn