[XML-SIG] xmlpickle.py ?!

[M.-A. Lemburg]

uche.ogbuji@fourthought.com wrote:
> 
> > BTW, how would one access "Mike" in this XML file without reverting to
> > positional indexing ?
> >
> > <dictionary>
> >       <item>
> >               <key>Mike</key>
> >               <value><address>1234 Main Street</address></value>
> >       </item>
> > </dictionary>
> 
> Hmm?  No positional indexing neede, I'd think:
> 
> xml.xpath.Evaluate('string(/dictionary/item/key)')
> 
> would return "Mike".
> 
> Maybe I misunderstand you.

What happens if your dictionary has 100 entries and you
want to lookup "Mike" (which is stored as content of key) ?

And once you've found it, how would you get at the corresponding
value ?

Sorry for my ignorance shining through here. I should
really read the XPath specs... ALAS, no time for this now.
 
> > It seems that these XPath lookups have to be context senstive...
> 
> They do, but how does that imply "positional indexing"?

Well, I guess sometimes you'd have to look ahead (in terms of
structure depth) to find the right tag and then back out
again to read the container as a whole, e.g. in the above
case the item.

Thanks,
-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
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