XOM API for Processing XML with Java

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

Wolfgang Hoschek wrote:


> How would an external XPath impl (without access to XOM's private 
> backdoors) create an XPathNamespaceNode? I guess it can't, which 
> suggests the design is rather limited.


It can be done but it's a hack. Just create a document with the 
appropriate namespaces, and then use an XPath expression like 
//namespace::node() to grab them. This is how the unit tests for this 
functionality are written.

If someone discovers a compelling use case for creating these, I can 
expose the constructor; but if not I'd rather keep the constructors 
package protected. The smaller I can keep the public API the better. YAGNI.

I'm also afraid that if I expose public constructors, programmers will 
expect to be able to add these nodes to elements. I'm already a little 
worried that people (JDOM programmers especially) will be looking for 
the public constructors rather than looking for the write methods in 
Element.

--
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo AT metalab.unc.edu
XML in a Nutshell 3rd Edition Just Published!
http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xian3/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0596007647/cafeaulaitA/ref=nosim