edu.upenn.cis.ptb.xpath
Class PTBXPath

java.lang.Object
  org.jaxen.BaseXPath
      edu.upenn.cis.ptb.xpath.PTBXPath

All Implemented Interfaces:

java.io.Serializable, org.jaxen.XPath

public class PTBXPath

extends org.jaxen.BaseXPath

XPath expression providing access to the additional functions.

This documentation has changed since v0.2.3.

The following syntactic shortenings are supported:

Standard XPath	Short Form
self::NP	=::NP
child::NP	>::NP
parent::NP	<::NP
descendant::NP	>>::NP
descendant-or-self::NP	=>>::NP
ancestor-or-self::NP	<<=::NP
following::NP	->::NP
preceding::NP	<-::NP
following-sibling::NP	$>::NP
preceding-sibling::NP	<$::NP

All the standard functions and axes should work as expected. Here are some simple Xpath queries:

  =>>::NP - selects all the nodes with constituent label NP

  =>>::S[contains(@roles,"TPC")] - selects all the nodes with constituent label S, and
  role TPC.

  =>>::John[->::Mary] - selects all the nodes with label John (terminals) 
  which are followed by nodes with label Mary. 

  =>>::John/->::Mary - to select the nodes with label Mary in the query
 above.
 

The additional functions in this package are for the LPath extensions (Bird et al). Nested function calls needs some extra syntax, since XPath 1.0 doesn't really allow recursion.

For example, consider a query to select, within a VP, all NP nodes that immediately follow a VB that is a child of the VP. What we want is roughly:

  subtree(>>::VP, 'i-foll(>::VB,'=::NP')')
 

However this has embedded quotes which is not allowed. For this reason, quotes can be replaced by curly braces.

 subtree(>>::VP, {i-foll(>::VB,{=::NP})})
 

Since:

0.1

Version:

2

Author:

nikhild

See Also:

Serialized Form

Field Summary

protected static java.util.WeakHashMap

fEscapedExprMap

Constructor Summary

PTBXPath(java.lang.String xpathExpr, org.jaxen.Navigator nav)
Creates a new instance of PTBXPath

Method Summary

static java.lang.String	createExpression(java.lang.String prefix, java.lang.String functionName, java.lang.String xpathStr, java.lang.String selectorStr) Convenience method for creating recursive expressions.
protected org.jaxen.FunctionContext	createFunctionContext()
protected org.jaxen.NamespaceContext	createNamespaceContext()
static java.lang.String	desugarExpr(java.lang.String xpathExpr)
static java.lang.String	unEscapeExpr(java.lang.String xpathStr)

Methods inherited from class org.jaxen.BaseXPath

addNamespace, booleanValueOf, createVariableContext, debug, evaluate, getContext, getContextSupport, getFunctionContext, getNamespaceContext, getNavigator, getRootExpr, getVariableContext, numberValueOf, selectNodes, selectNodesForContext, selectSingleNode, selectSingleNodeForContext, setFunctionContext, setNamespaceContext, setVariableContext, stringValueOf, toString, valueOf

Methods inherited from class java.lang.Object

clone, equals, finalize, getClass, hashCode, notify, notifyAll, wait, wait, wait

Field Detail

fEscapedExprMap

protected static java.util.WeakHashMap fEscapedExprMap

Constructor Detail

PTBXPath

public PTBXPath(java.lang.String xpathExpr,
                org.jaxen.Navigator nav)
         throws org.jaxen.JaxenException

Creates a new instance of PTBXPath

Method Detail

createFunctionContext

protected org.jaxen.FunctionContext createFunctionContext()

createNamespaceContext

protected org.jaxen.NamespaceContext createNamespaceContext()

desugarExpr

public static java.lang.String desugarExpr(java.lang.String xpathExpr)

createExpression

public static java.lang.String createExpression(java.lang.String prefix,
                                                java.lang.String functionName,
                                                java.lang.String xpathStr,
                                                java.lang.String selectorStr)

Convenience method for creating recursive expressions. Using this makes sense only if the functions are one of immediately-following, immediately-preceding, or subtree, in order to embed them inside each other. See the class level docs for an example of use.

unEscapeExpr

public static java.lang.String unEscapeExpr(java.lang.String xpathStr)