CODEWITHSUNDEEP
xpathxml-namespaces
Jay
Jay

Reputation: 14441

xpath select by namespace content

I was considering using xml namespaces in my configuration file. If I tag the config file content using a namespace then options for a program version are identified.

Is there a way to select all the nodes with a specific namespace version number and lower? This allows any version of the app to read any version configuration file without change.

Example:

  <ns1:config xmlns:ns1="version 1.0">
     <ns1:somesetting>blah</ns1:somesetting>
     <ns2:SomeNewSetting xmlns:ns2="version 2.0">foob</ns2:SomeNewSetting>
  </ns1:config>

Version 1 of the app selects namespace = "version 1.0".

Version 2 of the app selects namespace = "version 1.0" or namespace = "version 2.0".

Is there are better method than the brute force solution?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 111

Answers (1)

Michael Kay
Michael Kay

Reputation: 163262

Using namespaces to manage versioning of an XML vocabulary is generally considered a bad idea. One of the reasons is well illustrated by your question: namespaces are not ordered. It's much better to use a version attribute. Dynamic selection of elements based on the value of an attribute is much easier than dynamic selection by namespace.

Upvotes: 1

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