TinyXPath documentation

1.2.4

TinyXPath is an XPath processor, building another brick on top of the TinyXML package.

Usage

In order to use TinyXPath, one need to include the xpath_processor.h file and link with the tinyxpath code.

Under Windows :
- You first have to generate the debug and/or release library by compiling the tinyxpath_lib project
- You can then link with the debug or release library that has been generated in tinyxpath_lib/debug and tinyxpath_lib/release
Under Linux, there's no library yet. You will need to build all .cpp files (except main.cpp and htmlutil.cpp) in your project. There is a build script for the example program in the distribution.
The main.cpp source file is an example/regression test source.

In order to compute an XPath expression, one need to :

instanciate the TinyXPath::xpath_processor class, giving the constructor a source (Tiny) XML tree and an XPath expression.
Call TinyXPath::xpath_processor::er_compute_xpath. This delivers the XPath result.

As an alternative if you know beforehand what result type you're looking for, you can use the following alternate member functions at step 2 :

TinyXPath::xpath_processor::S_compute_xpath : returns a string
TinyXPath::xpath_processor::i_compute_xpath : returns a single integer
TinyXPath::xpath_processor::u_compute_xpath_node_set : returns the number of nodes in the node set. The node set should be retrieved by calls to

once again, the choice of v_get_xpath_base or its two alternates depend if you know whether you know if you wait for an attribute or another type of node, or not.

Alternate usage : static functions

Now, to make it really simple to use, if you only look for one result at a time, you can include only the following header :

#include "xpath_static.h"

and then use the following set of functions :

TinyXPath::i_xpath_int to get an integer result
TinyXPath::d_xpath_double to get a double result
TinyXPath::o_xpath_bool to get a bool result
TinyXPath::S_xpath_string to get a string result
TinyXPath::XNp_xpath_node to get a TiXmlNode
TinyXPath::XAp_xpath_attribute to get a TiXmlAttribute

or if you need to know whether there was some error with the XPath evaluation :

Modification to the source tree

Be aware that the input tree user value is modified after the call : all user data (TiXmlNode::SetUserData) are replaced by the document order (XPath meaning).

Namespace

Important notice : the whole TinyXPath engine is declared in the TinyXPath namespace. This means that all your declarations have to be prefixed with TinyXPath:: or, if you don't fear collisions with the classes or functions declared in TinyXPath, you can add the following declaration after the #include of xpath_processor.h or xpath_static.h :

using namepsace TinyXPath;

This would allow you to skip the TinyXPath:: prefix.

License

TinyXPath is covered by the zlib license. Here it is :

www.sourceforge.net/projects/tinyxpath
Copyright (c) 2002-2004 Yves Berquin (yvesb@users.sourceforge.net)

This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied
warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any
damages arising from the use of this software.

Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any
purpose, including commercial applications, and to alter it and
redistribute it freely, subject to the following restrictions:

1. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must
not claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this
software in a product, an acknowledgment in the product documentation
would be appreciated but is not required.

2. Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and
must not be misrepresented as being the original software.

3. This notice may not be removed or altered from any source
distribution.

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