Item 35. Navigate with XPath
Whether you're writing code with DOM, JDOM, dom4j, Sparta, or some other tree-based API, one of the primary tasks is navigating the document to locate particular nodes, whether for query or update. XPath is a very powerful, very robust language for navigating XML documents. It often works better than explicitly specified navigation using methods such as getChildNode() or getNextSibling().
Navigation in a tree-based API is a surprisingly complex and error-prone operation. For example, consider a simple contacts file that includes names and phone numbers and claims to follow the DTD shown in Example 35-1.
Example 35-1. A DTD for a Simple Contacts File
<!ELEMENT Contacts (Contact+)> <!ELEMENT Contact (Name, Phone)> ... |
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