XPath default namespace in attributes

[Marcel <cr...@gmx.de>]

Hi,

I have a problem with the default namespace and an xpath query.
I know I have to set the namespace declaration as described in the faq.

This works great for nodes, but unfortunately not for attributes.

The following xpath query fails on the xml file:

/ox:BinaryCollaboration/ox:Role/@ox:name

but this one is successful:

/ox:BinaryCollaboration/ox:Role/@name

I use the selectNodeList()  method and add the namespace in the third 
parameter.


My problem is that the xml file sometimes has a default namespace, and 
sometimes not.

Do you know how I can set the default namespace for the attributes? Or 
do you have another solution for my problem ?

Any help is apprectiated.

Marcel

Re: XPath default namespace in attributes

[Joseph Kesselman <ke...@us.ibm.com>]

>My problem is that the xml file sometimes has a default namespace, and
>sometimes not.

XPath is namespace aware. It doesn't care how the namespace is expressed;
whether prefix or default, it's matching on the namespace and local name,
not the QName.

XPath 1.0 does not support default namespaces in XPath expressions. You
must use a prefix to denote the desired namespace, even when the document
being searched didn't.

XPath 2.0 has proposed changing this. But 2.0 is still only a Working
Draft.

______________________________________
Joe Kesselman, IBM Next-Generation Web Technologies: XML, XSL and more.
"The world changed profoundly and unpredictably the day Tim Berners Lee
got bitten by a radioactive spider." -- Rafe Culpin, in r.m.filk