[manual index][section index]

NAME

w3c-xpointers - parser for XPointers framework including XPath

SYNOPSIS

include "xpointers.m";

xpointers := load Xpointers Xpointers->PATH;
Xpath, Xstep: import xpointers;

# special operators ('+', '-', etc represent themselves)
One, Ole, Oge, Omul, Odiv, Omod, Oand, Oor, Oneg,
Onodetype, Onametest, Ofilter, Opath: con ...;

# axis types
Aancestor,
Aancestor_or_self,
Aattribute,
Achild,
Adescendant,
Adescendant_or_self,
Afollowing,
Afollowing_sibling,
Anamespace,
Aparent,
Apreceding,
Apreceding_sibling,
Aself: con iota;

Xstep: adt {
   axis:  int;  # Aancestor, ... (above)
   op:    int;  # Onametest or Onodetype
   ns:    string;
   name:  string;
   arg:   string;  # optional parameter to processing-instruction
   preds: cyclic list of ref Xpath;

   text:  fn(nil: self ref Xstep): string;
   axisname:  fn(i: int): string;
};

Xpath: adt {
   pick{
   E =>
      op:    int;
      l, r:  cyclic ref Xpath;
   Fn =>
      ns:    string;
      name:  string;
      args:  cyclic list of ref Xpath;
   Var =>
      ns:    string;
      name:  string;
   Path =>
      abs:   int;
      steps: list of ref Xstep;
   Int =>
      val:   big;
   Real =>
      val:   real;
   Str =>
      s:     string;
   }
   text: fn(nil: self ref Xpath): string;
};

framework:  fn(s: string):
               (string, list of (string, string, string), string);

# predefined schemes
element:    fn(s: string): (string, list of int, string);
xmlns:      fn(s: string): (string, string, string);
xpointer:   fn(s: string): (ref Xpath, string);

DESCRIPTION

Xpointers implements a parser for the World-Wide Web Consortium's XPointers framework, including a parser for XPath expressions.

Init must be called before any other operation in the module.

Framework parses a string s according to the grammar for the XPointers framework, and returns a tuple (short, pointers, err). On an error, the string err gives a diagnostic and the other two values are nil. Otherwise, if short is non-nil, the XPointer was a `shorthand pointer', with the given value; pointers will be nil. If a scheme-based pointer is used, short is nil and pointers has a list of tuples (ns, scheme, data), each representing one pointer value. Ns is the XML name space for the given scheme; the default name space is represented by nil. Scheme is the XPointer scheme name within that name space; and data is the actual pointer value following the rules of that scheme. (They all have completely different syntax.)

Three common schemes are directly supported by the module, by functions named after the scheme. All of them follow the convention of returning a tuple in which the last element is a diagnostic string. On an error, all but that last element of the tuple will be nil, and the last element will be a non-nil string with a diagnostic.

Xmlns parses an XML name space definition of the form ns=uri, and returns its components.

Element parses a value of the XPointer element scheme, given by the grammar:

selector ::= name child*  |  child+
child ::= '/' [1-9][0-9]*

The optional name is an XPointer `shorthand pointer'. Each child number selects the child with that index (origin 1) at the corresponding level of the XML tree beneath the node selected by the name, or starting at the root of the XML tree. Element returns a tuple ((name, path), err) where name is the top element name or nil if none was specified, and path is a list of int giving the path of child indices.

The most complex scheme is xpointer, because its syntax is that of XML's elaborate XPath expression. Xpointer parses such an expression and returns a tuple (e, err) where e refers to an Xpath value that represents the abstract syntax of the XPath Expr. Xpointer checks only the syntax of s, and does not check that functions are limited to those specified by the xpointer scheme (that is consistent with it being a parse of s, rather than an XPointer or XPath evaluator).

Xpath and Xstep together represent an abstract syntax of the XPath grammar.

Xstep represents the XPath Step grammar rule, with all abbreviations expanded to their full form:

Step ::= AxisName '::' NodeTest Predicate*
NodeTest ::= NameTest | NodeType '(' ')'
NameTest ::= '*' | NCName ':' '*' | (NCName ':')? NCName
Predicate ::= '[' Expr ']'

The correspondence is as follows:


s.axis
Represents the AxisName by one of the constants Aancestor to Aself.
s.op
Onametest or Onodetype to say which rule is represented
s.ns
For a NameTest, gives the XML name space; can be * for `any name space' or nil for the default name space. For a NodeType, gives the type: comment, node, processing-instruction, or text.
s.name
Gives the name for a NameTest; can be * for `any name'.
s.arg
The optional literal parameter to a NodeType that is a processing-instruction.
s.preds
A list of Xpath values representing the optional sequence of Predicate expressions
s.text()
Returns a string representing the Xstep in textual form.
s.axisname(a)
Returns the printable text for axis code a (ie, one of Aancestor to Aself)

Xpath values represent an abstract syntax for an XPath expression. Briefly, an expression follows the grammar below (see the XPath specification for the full concrete syntax).

e ::=	e 'or' e
   |	e 'and' e
   |	e ('=' | '!=') e
   |	e ('<' | '<=' | '>=' | '>') e
   |	e ('+' | '-') e
   |	e ('*' | 'div' | 'mod') e
   |	'-' e
   |	e '|' e
   |	filter
   |	path
filter ::= primary predicate* (('/' | '//') relpath)?
primary ::= '$' QName | '(' e ')' | Literal | Number | FunctionName '(' (e (',' e)*) ')'
path ::= '/' relpath | relpath
relpath ::= relpath '/' relpath | relpath '//' relpath | Step

Most of e is represented by a binary tree using the pick Xpath.E(op, l, r) where op is an operator symbol (either the character itself or one of the constants One, Odiv, etc. for compound symbols), and l and r represent the operands. The only unary operator Oneg has its operand in l. A filter uses the binary operator Xpath.E(Ofilter, e, pred) to apply each predicate to the preceding primary or predicate. A filter also uses Xpath.E(Opath, e, relpath) to apply the optional relpath (represented by a value of Xpath.Path) to the preceding part of the filter expression.

The other cases in the pick adt correspond to the various choices of path and primary. Integer and real numbers are distinguished. Literal is represented by Xpath.Str; variable references (ie, $QName) are represented by XPath.Var, where ns gives the optional XML name space of the name. Path is represented by Xpath.Path(abs, steps) where abs is non-zero if and only if the path is absolute (starts with `/' or `//'), and steps lists the Xstep values corresponding to the slash-separated Steps in the grammar. Abbreviated forms such as `//' are converted by xpointer to their full internal form in terms of `/', as defined by the specification, so there is no need to distinguish the delimiters in this representation.

SOURCE

/appl/lib/w3c/xpointers.b

SEE ALSO

``XML Path Language (XPath) Version 1.0'', http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath
``XPointer framework'', http://www.w3.org/TR/xptr-framework/
``XPointer element() scheme'', http://www.w3.org/TR/xptr-element/
``XPointer xmlns() scheme'', http://www.w3.org/TR/xptr-xmlns/
``XPointer xpointer() scheme'', http://www.w3.org/TR/xptr-xpointer/

W3C-XPOINTERS(2 ) Rev:  Thu Feb 15 14:43:26 GMT 2007