Re: quick XPath question: finding /a/b/c with a default namespace

[James Strachan <james_strachan@yahoo.co.uk>]

Hi David

Thanks for your answer. I first thought that was how it worked but the
following sentence in the XPath spec confused me:-

"the default namespace declared with xmlns is not used: if the QName does
not have a prefix, then the namespace URI is null"

So I thought that

<a xmlns="foo">

would have a namespace URI of null. Which would be the same namespace URI of

<a>


FWIW I'm not using XPath from inside XSLT, I'm using it on a dom4j object
model. So its much less convenient to define a namespace context.

So in non-XSLT uses, without explicitly creating a namespace context and
populating it with xmlns:x="dummyNamespace" up front and then using the path
/x:a/x:b/x:c I can only find <c> with the XPath expression

/*:a/*:b/*:c

This seems unfortunate for non-XSLT uses of XPath.

James

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Carlisle" <davidc@nag.co.uk>
To: <james_strachan@yahoo.co.uk>
Cc: <xml-dev@lists.xml.org>
Sent: Friday, July 27, 2001 10:45 AM
Subject: Re: quick XPath question: finding /a/b/c with a default namespace


>
> > (Strictly speaking maybe
> > XPath questions should be sent to the XSL mail list?)
>
> (probably, and this answer will be in the FAQ for that list)
>
>
> > Should the path ..find the <c> element?
>
> No. For the reason you give, the default namespace is not used in the
> Xpath. But you misunderstand the meaning of
>
> > <a xmlns="dummyNamespace">
>
>
> > So the default namespace is not used and none of the QNames in the
document
> > or the path have namespace prefixes, so the namespace URI is null for
all
> > the QNames.
>
> whether or not a prefix is used has no effect on the namepace URI.
> The namespace URI on all of the elements a  b  and c in your example is
> dummyNamespace, so the Xpath you require is
>
> x:a/x:b/x:c
>
> where x: is the prefix assigned to the namepace URI dummyNamespace in
> the stylesheet.
>
>
> David
>
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