XIA

XIA (XPath In Ada) is a native implementation of XPath 1.0 querying. Using the DOM services of AdaCore's XML implementation, XIA allows XML-enabled applications to selectively access the contents of XML documents that have been loaded by the XML/Ada DOM parser.

Downloads

The XIA implementation uses Simon Wright's implementation of the Booch Components, a subset of which is included in the distribution. This subset resides in its own directory (booch4xia) and is provided only as a convenience if the Booch components are not otherwise present on the developer's system.

XIA source code: (tgz) (zip)

Ada and XML Resources

Ada Core Technologies, the creators and maintainers of the GNAT Ada 95 compiler and XML/Ada.
AdaGOOP was used to create the XIA XPath parsing implementation (Thanks also goes to Dr. Martin Carlisle of the US Air Force Academy for his suggestion on how to accommodate in the grammar XPath keywords showing up as XML document elements).
The XML standard is maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
W3C also maintains the XPath specification.
A nice, simple XPath tutorial and on-line XPath query evaluator is available at ZVON, "The Guide to the XML Galaxy"

Submitting XPath Queries

Once XIA has been unpacked into a directory and that directory added to the compilation include path, just "with" the McKae.XML.XPath.XIA package and call the XPath_Query procedure, passing it a starting node (such as the root document node) and an XPath formatted query. Then use the DOM.Core.Nodes Node_List functions to access the nodes in the returned list.
   -- Apply an XPath query, starting with the given node, in the case
   --  of a relative XPath query, or the document that contains the
   --  given node, otherwise.  Returns a list of nodes, which may be
   --  empty, that meet the XPath specification.  If the query does
   --  not follow XPath syntax, the Malformed_XPath exception is
   --  raised.
   function XPath_Query
     (N     : Dom.Core.Node;
      -- A node in the XML tree against which the XPath query is
      --  submitted.

      XPath : String
      -- The XPath query.
     ) return Dom.Core.Node_List;
Current Status of XIA

Version: 1.00

This version of XIA implements the XPath 1.0 specification (albeit with one limitation). Optimization and further refinements will take place in subsequent releases. This is the first full public release that is intended for wide distribution.

The one limitation is that while the id() core library function is implemented, it is inoperable, as the underlying XMLAda tool set does not implement Get_Element_By_ID.

The txia_test.txt file, containing a list of XPath queries that seriously exercise the predicate filtering capabilities of XIA, has been updated to 151 queries. An auxiliary test XML file and associated queries has been added that focuses on element names that match those of XML keywords (it contains 13 queries).

Reports of errors (either in operation or in the nodes retrieved) would be appreciated. Please provide the XML document (or readable fragment), the query that was submitted, and a description of what was expected.

The test directory contains a test_xpath program, a simple XML file and associated DTD, the keyword testing XML file, and a script (txia) to run the test program and feed it a list of XPath queries (txia_tests.txt and keyword_content_tests.txt) for testing. txia_results.txt contains the expected output of executing the txia script.

Please send bug reports and questions to xia-info@mckae.com

Axes? Predicates? A [very] brief XPath Overview

Information about XPath is readily available on the web. The purpose of this overview is to provide some basics so that the capabilities of the current beta version will be understood.

An XPath query resembles a directory path specification: /personnel/person/name/given
(Especially for a simple query like that.)

An XPath query is more formally termed a "location path", with each component of the path called a "location step". The above query has four location steps: "personnel", "person", "name", and "given". The leading slash ("/") indicates that the path must start at the top of the DOM document. Two slashes "//") would signify that this path is being sought starting anywhere in the document, while no slash would mean that the path must start at whatever node was provided to the XPath query function as a starting point.

A location step consists of three parts:

Axis - Can be child (the default), parent, ancestor, or one of several others.
Node Test - Checks the kind of node, such as element, text, or comment
Predicate - Filters nodes based on the content of the node

So all the steps of the above query imply the default child axis, and each performs a node test checking that the node is an element having the given tag. No predicate is specified, so every element in the document having the <given> tag would be selected.

Another query: //ancestor::name returns every "name" node in the document that is an ancestor of some another node.

There is a large variety of predicate specifications, please see the references at the bottom of this page for more information on those.

System Configuration Information

Requires the GNAT Ada compiler. Verified with GNAT 3.15p and gcc 3.4.2 on Linux
Requires XMLAda
Verified with Red Hat Linux 8.0 and 9.0
Verified on Cygwin 1.5.12 with gcc 3.3.3

©2006 McKae Technologies