XOM API for Processing XML with Java

[Wolfgang Hoschek <whoschek AT lbl.gov>]

> John Cowan wrote:
>
>
> > There is no problem in handling this pattern in a type-safe way.
> > You just need an XPathResult class with four extraction methods:
> > double doubleValue(), String stringValue(), boolean booleanValue(),
> > and Nodes nodelistValue().

Just for illustration: Nux has an interface "ResultSequence". Its 
intent corresponds to such an XPathResult class.
Currently it only has methods "Nodes toNodes()" (corresponding to 
nodeListValue()), and "Node next()" to get the next node of the 
sequence. I have left out methods doubleValue(), String stringValue(), 
boolean booleanValue() on ResultSequence because the same behaviour can 
be achieved via

ResultSequence results = xquery.execute(contextNode);
String s = results.next().getValue();
double d = Double.parseDouble(results.next().getValue())
boolean b = new Boolean(results.next().getValue()).booleanValue()
Nodes nodes = results.toNodes();

To me this seems only marginally more complex, so convenience methods 
for this (or slight variations on it) seemed to add more API complexity 
(and correspondingly obscure understanding) than they'd eliminate.