alt Hacker Newsxpath is so fucking cool
i can understand why it failed for general use, but shit like this revives my excitement
q: i'm not an expert, this looks like it extends xpath syntax? haven't seen stuff like the /map is this referring to the html map element? or a fp-style map?
Replies
jerf • yesterday at 8:12 PM
XPath may have "failed" for general use but it's generally well-enough supported that I can find a library in the common languages I've used when I went looking for it. In some ways the hard part is just knowing it exists so you can use it if you need it.
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rhdunn • yesterday at 7:31 PM
Maps were added in XPath 3.1 -- https://www.w3.org/TR/xpath-31/#id-maps.
There's currently work on XPath 4.0 -- https://qt4cg.org/specifications/xquery-40/xpath-40.html.
I think xpath is cool too!
If wxpath can help revive some of that excitement, then I consider my project a success.
As for your question, while wxpath does extend the xpath syntax, `/map` is not one of its additions, nor is it a html map element.
XPath 3.1 introduced first-class maps (and arrays) (https://www.w3.org/TR/xpath-31/#id-maps), and `/map` is the syntax to create said structure. It's an awesome feature that's especially useful for quickly delivering JSON-like objects.