Contains history up to version 1.0.0.
Eliminated the problem with XPath "keywords" being treated as reserved words, thanks to some assistance from Dr. Martin Carlisle. This fix removes any limitations on the names of the elements that can be selected from XML documents.
To test the above fix, another simple XML test file was added, whose
contents consists entirely of XPath keywords. A number of XPath
queries against this file are provided for testing. (See the
keyword_content.xml and keyword_content_tests.txt files.)
This version corrects one of the known bugs in XIA 0.60--where a predicate containing an expression that is a union (|) of node sets generated a syntax error.
Additional test cases added to txia_tests.txt as well.
This release completes the required functionality for the XML Path Language (XPath) Version 1.0.
This itself is not a 1.0 version because it has not been fully shaken out for bugs, and it is in fact being released with two known bugs and a limitation:
-
Predicates containing an expression that is a union (|) of node sets generates in a syntax error.
-
The axis and node test names are being treated as reserved words, hence if the XML document being processed contains elements that have those names (e.g.,
child,ancestor), any XPath queries that refer to those elements will be rejected as having a syntax error. -
The
id()core library function is implemented, but inoperable. It relies on the XMLAda implementation ofGet_Element_By_ID, which is not implemented.
Changes since the last release include fixing some minor bugs and completing the implementation of the core library functions.
-
In some situations the descendant-or-self axis was ignoring the "self".
-
When using consecutive predicates, the result of evaluating subsequent ones was being union'ed to the node set, rather than doing additional filtering.
New and completed functions:
id
lang
name
local-name
namespace-uri
The txia_test.txt file, containg a list of XPath queries that
seriously exercise the predicate filtering capabilities of XIA, has
been updated to 140 queries. In addition, a test results file,
txia_results.txt, is now included that shows the expected output from
running the txia test series.
This release implements the handling of path expressions within predicates, and adds/completes functions that work with node-sets acquired by the evaluation of such paths.
Therefore this release has sufficient capabilities implemented that one may now consider it for actual XML applications, rather than just something to play around with.
Remaining core library functions and capabilites will continue to be implemented in subsequent releases.
There is only one known significant bug: The parser treats and,
or, not, div, the axis names (child, ancestor, etc.), and
node type names (text, etc.) as reserved words, meaning that if an
XML document uses such a term as an element tag, referencing it as
part of the path in an XPath expression will generate a syntax error.
New and completed functions:
count
normalize-string
sum
translate
The txia_test.txt file, containg a list of XPath queries that
seriously exercise the predicate filtering capabilities of XIA, has
been updated (119 queries and growing!), as have the personal.xml
and personal.dtd test files.
First release with partial implementation of predicate filtering.
The arithmetic and relational operators have been implemented for numeric, boolean, and string operands. (This means that they're not yet handling node-set operands.)
A majority of the core library functions have been implemented, though again those dealing with node-set arguments may not be implemented, or may only support the numeric, boolean, and string arguments.
Predicate expressions utilizing paths are not yet implemented.
List of core library functions in this release:
boolean
count
concat
contains
ceiling
false
floor
last
not
number
position
round
string
starts-with
substring-before
substring-after
substring
string-length
sum
true
See the txia_test.txt file for a list of XPath queries that seriously
exercise the predicate filtering capabilities of XIa.
Same thing only better.
This version fixes bugs pertaining to extracting the queried nodes, but really the only functional difference between this and the previous version is that XPath expressions containing predicates are now completely syntactically checked. Previously you could have pretty much any gibberish between the brackets and so long as the rest of the query was correct, the query would be accepted. Not so any more.
However, internally the entire parsing implementation has been replaced with one generated with the aid of AdaGOOP/scaflex/scayacc.
Those generated parsing files (modified), along with the xpath.g grammar used as AdaGOOP input, are included. Although what you get out of AdaGOOP won't exactly match what is included in this archive. Modifications were done to raise an exception in the case of a syntax error instead of printing a message, and the IO package was modified to get its input from a string rather than a file.
A script, txia, and an input file of XPath queries,
txia_tests.txt, are provided to jam a bunch of queries through the
test program (if you add more test queries, be sure to leave the empty
line at the bottom of the file).
The archive now contains the specific Booch components needed to build XIA. You don't need to use the provided subset if you already have the components installed (as they're unchanged from the primary distribution), but they're provided here as a convenience.
A command line to compile the test program in the xia-0.20/test
directory is:
gnatmake -I.. -I../booch4xia test_xpath `xmlada-config`
Please let me know if you have any questions or find bugs with the current functionality.
XIA utilizes Ada Core's XML/Ada distribution, and is known to work on Linux (RedHat 9) under GNAT 3.15p and GNAT 3.4.2. There should be no Linux-specific dependencies.
There's nothing special about building or incorporating XIA into your
application. Simply unpack the archive into a directory and either
explicitly include (-I) that directory on the command line or add it
as part of the ADA_INCLUDE_PATH environment variable setting.
AdaBrowse generated documentation is available in the doc subdirectory.
A rudimentary query test program is provided as test_xpath.adb.
Compile it on Linux as:
gnatmake test_xpath `xmlada-config`
You'll be asked for the name of an XML file, and then an XPath query
string. Enter your query, and when done use an empty carriage return
to end the program. Within Test_XPath,
McKae.XML.XPath.XPath_Query is invoked with the document's root
(document) node and the query and a list of nodes (which may be empty)
is returned. The contents of each node is displayed--if it's an
element node, its first level of children are displayed, otherwise the
value of the node (such as its non-blank text) appears.
A simple XML file is provided, personal.xml.
Here are some queries to try on it:
//@id
Extract all the attribute nodes named id.
//email
Extracts all email nodes.
/personnel/person/link/@subordinates
Finds all the subordinate attribute nodes associated with the link
node that corresponds to the given path
//given/parent::*
Find any parent node of all given nodes
//family/text()
Get the text node children that are associated with the family
element (Note that test_xpath removes any white space from the text
before displaying it, which if it's all whitespace, leaves nothing to
display)
//name/following::email
Find all email nodes that follow a name node