On 2011-11-21 20:34, Martin Kadlec (BS-Harou) wrote:
Hello everyone, I've noticed that the find/findAll methods are
currently being discussed and there is one thing that might be a good
idea to consider.
Currently, it's quite uncomfortable to use XPath in javascript. The
document.evalute method has lots of arguments and we have to remember
plenty of constants to make it work. IE and Opera support selectNodes
method on NodePrototype, which is really useful, but what's the point
in using it when it doesn't work in FF/Chrome/Safari.
My idea is to combine querySelector/All and selectNodes methods. This
combination - find/findAll - would make using XPath much easier and
it might give a good reason to lot's of programmers to use it instead
of querySelector/All although it's going to be newer technology.
This idea seems similar to how JQuery used to support both Selectors and
XPath in the same API [1]. Support was subsequently removed in 1.2, and
at the time moved to an XPath Compatibility Plugin [2]. However, the
link to the actual plugin page now returns a 404, and I can't find that
plugin or any replacement elsewhere.
This seems to suggest that support for XPath was not considered
important enough for its continued maintenance.
Are there any other popular libraries that do still offer XPath APIs, or
is there any data showing that authors really want to use it?
[1] http://docs.jquery.com/DOM/Traversing/Selectors#XPath_Selectors
[2] http://docs.jquery.com/Release:jQuery_1.2#XPath_Compatibility_Plugin
--
Lachlan Hunt - Opera Software
http://lachy.id.au/
http://www.opera.com/
