W3C

XPointer element() Scheme

W3C Working Draft 10 July 2002

This version:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-xptr-element-20020710/
Latest version:
http://www.w3.org/TR/xptr-element/
Previous version:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/CR-xptr-20010911/
Editors:
Paul Grosso, Arbortext, Inc. <pgrosso@arbortext.com>
Eve Maler, Sun Microsystems <eve.maler@sun.com>
Jonathan Marsh, Microsoft <jmarsh@microsoft.com>
Norman Walsh, Sun Microsystems <Norman.Walsh@Sun.COM>

This document is also available in the following non-normative format: XML (DTD, XSL).


Abstract

The XPointer element() scheme is intended to be used with the XPointer Framework [XPtrFrame] to allow basic addressing of XML elements.

Status of this Document

This is a Last Call W3C Working Draft for review by W3C members and other interested parties. It is a draft document and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use W3C Working Drafts as reference material or to cite them as other than "work in progress." Comments on this document should be sent no later than 31 July 2002 to the public mailing list www-xml-linking-comments@w3.org (archive).

This document has been produced by the W3C XML Linking Working Group as part of the XML Activity. The goals of this work are set out in the XPointer Requirements document.

There are patent disclosures and license commitments associated with this working draft, which may be found on the XPointer IPR Statement page in conformance with W3C policy.

Even though it has not been seen before in this form, this specification is being published as a Last Call Working Draft because it is essentially a subset of the previous specification. This specification takes the XPointer shorthand form that was in the XPointer Candidate Recommendation published on 11 September 2001 and puts it into an element() scheme. Note that the "bare names" functionality has been extended slightly to include a schema-based ID addressing option.

We are specifically seeking input on what the XML Linking WG should recommend as a minimum conformance level for the purposes of XPointer usage in fragment identifiers for any resource whose Internet media type is one of text/xml, application/xml, text/xml-external-parsed-entity, or application/xml-external-parsed-entity. Actually specifying this level is an issue that will have to be taken up normatively in the successor to IETF RFC 3023 [RFC 3023].

A list of current W3C Recommendations and other technical documents can be found at http://www.w3.org/TR/

Table of Contents

1 Introduction
2 Conformance
3 Language and Processing

Appendix

A Normative References


1 Introduction

The XPointer element() scheme is intended to be used with the XPointer Framework [XPtrFrame] to allow basic addressing of XML elements.

[Definition: The key words must, must not, required, shall, shall not, should, should not, recommended, may, and optional in this specification are to be interpreted as described in [RFC 2119].]

The terms pointer, pointer part, scheme, XPointer processor, application, error, failure, and namespace binding context are used in this specification as defined in the XPointer Framework specification. Note that errors defined by this specification are distinct from XPointer Framework errors.

The formal grammar for the element() scheme is given using simple Extended Backus-Naur Form (EBNF) notation, as described in the XML Recommendation [XML].

2 Conformance

This specification normatively depends on the XPointer Framework [XPtrFrame] specification.

XPointer processors supporting the element() scheme normatively depend on sufficient input about an XML resource to identify the XML Information Set [Infoset] and XML Schema [XSD] information items and properties listed in the XPointer Framework specification.

Conforming XPointer processors claiming to support the element() scheme must conform to the behavior defined in this specification and may conform to additional XPointer scheme specifications.

3 Language and Processing

This section describes the syntax and semantics of the element() scheme and the behavior of XPointer processors with respect to this scheme.

The scheme name is "element". The scheme data syntax is as follows; if scheme data in a pointer part with the element() scheme does not conform to the syntax defined in this section, it is an element() scheme error and the pointer part fails.

element() Scheme Syntax
[1]   elementschemedata   ::=   (Name, childseq?) | childseq
[2]   childseq   ::=   ('/' [1-9] [0-9]* )+

The scheme data consists of either a Name (as defined in the XML specification [XML]) or a child sequence, or both.

A Name appearing alone identifies a single element exactly as for the Name shorthand form defined in the XPointer Framework [XPtrFrame] specification, except that failure to identify a subresource results in pointer part failure rather than an XPointer Framework error.

For example, the following pointer part identifies the element with an ID (as defined in XPointer Framework) of "foo":

element(foo)

A child sequence appearing alone identifies an element by means of stepwise navigation, which is directed by a sequence of integers separated by slashes (/); each integer n locates the nth child element of the previously located element. The integer following the first slash represents the nth top-level element: either the unique document element (the [document element] property, if the resource is an XML document, which case the integer is always 1) or one of potentially several root elements (the entity root element(s), if the resource is an external parsed entity). For example, assuming that the XML resource is a whole XML document, the following pointer part identifies the second child element inside the root element of the document:

element(/1/2)

A child sequence appearing after a Name identifies an element by means of stepwise navigation, starting from the element located by the given name. For example, the following pointer part identifies an element as follows by first locating the element identified by the value ""intro"", then locating that element's third child element, then finally identifying that element's first child element:

element(intro/3/1)

If either the Name or the child sequence does not locate an element, no element is identified by the pointer part as a whole and the pointer part fails.

The element() scheme does not use the namespace binding context because it does not contain any qualified names.

A Normative References

Infoset
John Cowan and Richard Tobin, editors. XML Information Set. World Wide Web Consortium, 2001. (See http://www.w3.org/TR/xml-infoset/.)
RFC 2119
RFC 2119: Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels. Internet Engineering Task Force, 1997. (See http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2119.txt.)
XML
Tim Bray, Jean Paoli, C.M. Sperberg-McQueen, and Eve Maler, editors. Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Second Edition). World Wide Web Consortium, 2000. (See http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml.)
RFC 3023
RFC 3023: XML Media Types. Internet Engineering Task Force, 2001. (See http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3023.)
XPtrFrame
Paul Grosso, Eve Maler, Jonathan Marsh, and Norman Walsh, editors. XPointer Framework. World Wide Web Consortium, 2002. (See http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-xptr-framework-20020710/.)
XSD
Henry Thompson et al., editors. XML Schema Part 1. World Wide Web Consortium, 2001. (See http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-1/.)