Re: [Jaxen] problem with namespaces?

[Matt Smith]

Thanks for the explanation. I figured that was the case for the null-namespace, but you're right that I was thinking of the issue backwards; the prefix is arbitrary, not the namespace. In light of this, however, I think that James Strachan's XPathFactory is an appealing idea. I was wondering how XPathAPI managed to handle this without me doing any work, and I poked around the source and discovered that it makes goes and figures out namespaces mappings from the passed in element. -Matt ----- Original Message ----- From: "bob mcwhirter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Matt Smith" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, April 29, 2002 10:51 PM Subject: Re: [Jaxen] problem with namespaces? An xpath step is in the form of 'prefix:local-name', but when performing matching, we actually match against the URI, *not* the prefix.  This is actually a feature of the XPath spec.  It allows you to write XPaths without caring how someone binds the prefix/URIs in the document.  While you might always use "xs:", someone else might use "cheese:", but as long as they all point to the same ns-URI, then your XPath will work on both of them. So, short answer: No, node is *not* identified by untranslated name.  It's identified by namespace-URI and local name.  Prefix is only used to lookup the URI, not for actual matching.