DO NOT REPLY [Bug 26823] - XPath ignores namespace declarations except on root element

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http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=26823

XPath ignores namespace declarations except on root element





------- Additional Comments From keshlam@us.ibm.com  2004-02-10 14:30 -------
I believe this is working as designed.

The problem isn't the namespaces in your source document -- it's the namespaces 
in your XPath.

The document is fine. But the XPathAPI defaults to picking up understanding of 
how namespace prefixes are bound *only* from the namespaces actually declared 
on the namespace context node; it does not search the subtree for them (which 
would be slow, could have conflicts, etc.)

Either provide (construct?) a namespace context node which does declare all the 
prefixes your XPath needs, or plug in a prefix resolver to provide those 
bindings. See the alternative forms of XPathAPI invocation at 
http://xml.apache.org/xalan-j/apidocs/org/apache/xpath/XPathAPI.html

(Yes, it would be nice if XPath had a version which included prefix bindings in 
the path syntax, or which used actual namespace URIs rather than prefixes, so 
you could write truly portable self-contained XPaths. I've been grumbling about 
that for a very long time...)