[jdom-interest] XPath bindings?

[bob mcwhirter]

> So doesn't having Element.selectNodes() make JODM bound to
> Jaxen (or a particular implementation of XPath)?  What if a better
> implementation comes along?  Guess you could extended Element, override
> selectNodes(), tweak the Factory and go from there.  Naaaa, I still
> think keeping the API small, simple, and well-defined is the best 
> approach.

Well, the interface wouldn't be implementation-specific unless
we propagated the low-level Jaxen or SAXPath exceptions.

I was mostly suggesting this since I see lots of questions of
"How do I get XPath support in JDOM?"  Sure, it's in the FAQ
(btw, Jason, faq still needs updating to point to jaxen.org),
but that's extra hoops for folks to jump through.

> Off topic: Has anyone else wondered about data-binding and Jaxen.  I was
> playing with JAXB a few days ago and after generating a few classes, I
> started think of how you could automatically generate a Jaxen
> DocumentNavigator to work with these generated classes and get the best
> of both worlds.

This should be in jaxen-interest at lists.sf.net.  But yes, folks are
thinking about it.  And Dmitri has his JPath project at jakarta.apache.org
that gives you xpath evaluation over JavaBeans.  

	-bob