001/* XPathExpression.java -- 002 Copyright (C) 2004, 2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 003 004This file is part of GNU Classpath. 005 006GNU Classpath is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify 007it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by 008the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) 009any later version. 010 011GNU Classpath is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but 012WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of 013MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU 014General Public License for more details. 015 016You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License 017along with GNU Classpath; see the file COPYING. If not, write to the 018Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 01902110-1301 USA. 020 021Linking this library statically or dynamically with other modules is 022making a combined work based on this library. Thus, the terms and 023conditions of the GNU General Public License cover the whole 024combination. 025 026As a special exception, the copyright holders of this library give you 027permission to link this library with independent modules to produce an 028executable, regardless of the license terms of these independent 029modules, and to copy and distribute the resulting executable under 030terms of your choice, provided that you also meet, for each linked 031independent module, the terms and conditions of the license of that 032module. An independent module is a module which is not derived from 033or based on this library. If you modify this library, you may extend 034this exception to your version of the library, but you are not 035obligated to do so. If you do not wish to do so, delete this 036exception statement from your version. */ 037 038package javax.xml.xpath; 039 040import javax.xml.namespace.QName; 041import org.xml.sax.InputSource; 042 043/** 044 * An XPath expression. 045 * 046 * @author (a href='mailto:dog@gnu.org'>Chris Burdess</a) 047 * @since 1.3 048 */ 049public interface XPathExpression 050{ 051 052 /** 053 * Evaluates this expression against the specified context. 054 * @param item the evaluation context 055 * @param returnType the desired return type 056 */ 057 Object evaluate(Object item, 058 QName returnType) 059 throws XPathExpressionException; 060 061 /** 062 * Evaluates this expression against the specified context, returning the 063 * result as a string. 064 * @param item the evaluation context 065 */ 066 String evaluate(Object item) 067 throws XPathExpressionException; 068 069 /** 070 * Evaluates this expression against the specified context. 071 * @param source the source to load the context from 072 * @param returnType the desired return type 073 */ 074 Object evaluate(InputSource source, 075 QName returnType) 076 throws XPathExpressionException; 077 078 /** 079 * Evaluates this expression against the specified context, returning the 080 * result as a string. 081 * @param source the source to load the context from 082 */ 083 String evaluate(InputSource source) 084 throws XPathExpressionException; 085 086}