[Laszlo-user] The datapath attribute and XML namespaces...

[Fennell, Philip]

Hello,

Although I've had a quick look at the mail list archive and searched on
the internet, nothing immediately leaps-out about the use of XML
namespaces in the datapath expression.

For the application I'd like to build using OL4 (Open Laszlo 4) it has
XML instance data that uses a variety of namespaces.

Initially I was puzzled as to why my datapath expressions where not only
returning no values but the edittext elements where not even rendering.
At times like this it takes a few minutes of double-checking before it
dawns on me to remove the namespace prefixes from the path expressions,
and bobs-your-uncle it worked!

I'm quite surprised that the datapath expression evaluator is not
namespace aware.

Given the choice to use the colon as a delimiter between the dataset
name and the path expression I can understand the conflict that has
arisen because of this particular design choice.

I would like to suggest that you provide an additional method of
identifying the dataset which is similar to that used by XForms to
identify the instance data in a nodeset binding expression:

XForms - ref="instance('myData')/foo/bar/whatsit"

OL4    - datapath="dataset('myData')/foo/bar/whatsit"

Just to provide some context to this, I'm using XSLT 2 to transform an
XForms form into an OL4 application. So I'm sure you can see where I'm
coming from.


Regards

Philip Fennell