XOM API for Processing XML with Java

[Elliotte Harold <elharo AT metalab.unc.edu>]

Michael Kay wrote:

> I would encourage you to design the API so that it extends to anything XPath
> 2.0 can throw at you even if you initially implement only a subset of XPath
> 1.0. I think the right way to do this is to have methods that are specific
> to the return type expected:
>
> List<Node>    XPath.selectNodeSequence("*")
> Node          XPath.selectNode("..")
> double        XPath.selectDouble("count(*)")
> String        XPath.selectString("name(..)")
> boolean       XPath.selectBoolean("name(..) = 'banana')

This is just where Java's string-typedness mismatches with XSLT's 
weak-typedness. This isn't bad. I am worried that selectNode and 
selectNodeSequence blow up when the expression returns a 
String/double/boolean.

The complexity of it worries me, especially when you do consider XPath 2 
where there are many more types that might be returned.


--
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo AT metalab.unc.edu
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