XPath Extensions

With Version 0.1.0.0 an XPath extension is available in xmlsh which allows calling into xmlsh from with any xpath context including xpath, xlst, xquery, and the builtin &lt[ ... ]> commands.

To use this extension you need to use the saxon syntax for binding java extensions to saxon. (Note: this may change in the future, in particular if xmlsh is upgraded to use Saxon 9.2).

The java class to import is org.xmlsh.xpath.XPathFunctions
This can be done in the shell, or within an xslt or xquery script itself by using "declare namespace"
Example

declare namespace xmlsh=java:org.xmlsh.xpath.XPathFunctions

This namespace is predeclared for the XML expression syntax <[ ... ]>.
For example, the following works without using an explicit declaration

echo <[  <foo/>/xmlsh:eval("xcat") ]>

In order to use the extension functions within the xpath, xquery or xslt commands it must be declared either within xmlsh or for the case of xquery and xslt within their code/stylesheets.

Extension functions implemented

eval

The eval xpath function evaluates its first argument as an xmlsh string (identical to the eval command) and optionally its second argument as positional parameters. The return value of the eval function is the standard output of the command.

Examples

declare namespace xmlsh=java:org.xmlsh.xpath.XPathFunctions
xecho <[ xmlsh:eval("xecho $*" , ("foo" , <bar/> , 1 )  )  ]>
xquery -n 'xmlsh:eval("xls")'
xpath -n 'xmlsh:eval("xls $*" , "*.xml")'
var=<[ xmlsh:eval("xls") ]>

Calling XSLT from XQuery.

An interesting use of eval is to call xslt from within xquery. The context is passed to eval as the stdin and the output of the command becomes the result value of the expression. These examples are in xquery either via the <[ ]> syntax or the xquery command and require calling xquery from xmlsh to activate the extension function.

Example, in an XQuery expression, or file run from xmlsh

/foo/bar/xmlsh:eval("xslt -f style.xsl")/spam

calls "xslt" with the sytlesheet "style.xsl" passing the input context from /foo/bar as the input and then the output is further evaluated to extract the /spam child

An alternative of the above which can use variables for the stylesheet

let $style := "style.xsl"
return 
/foo/bar/xmlsh:eval("xslt" , ("-f" , $style) )/spam

An alternative which passes the input context as a third argument

let $style := "style.xsl"
return 
xmlsh:eval("xslt" , ("-f" , $style), /foo/bar  )/spam

xmlsh - XML Shell : XPathExtension

Revision [732]

XPath Extensions

Extension functions implemented

eval

Calling XSLT from XQuery.