Does XmlDataSource.XPath accept namespace qualifications?

September 4, 2004 12:42 AM Comments [2] Posted in ASP.NET | XML

I'm glad I'm not the only one that notice this. It's such an incredibly obvious omission, That I immediately assumed it was my fault and I was missing something. Can someone let me know if I'm completely out of touch on this or is it true that XmlDataSource.XPath and XPathBinder don't accept namespace qualified documents for evaluation with XPath? I am in the middle of a chapter on System.Xml for .NET 2.0 and I am surprised to have hit upon this missing functionality.

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Comments [2]
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Saturday, September 04, 2004 10:18:09 AM UTC
It's hard to believe they don't accept namespace qualified documents. XPath can't really work without namespaces. Wild guess: the bug reporter you reference misunderstood how default namespaces work in XPath (they don't) and is blaming Microsoft for what's really a bug in their own XPath expressions.
Elliotte Rusty Harold
Saturday, September 04, 2004 7:01:22 PM UTC
I hear ya, and I thought of that. I reflectored into the code though, and I can't see where they do any namespace resolution. I tried using the "def:" namespace prefix trick, but no luck.

Mind you, we're just talkingn about the *XPathBinder* - not XPath on .NET in general. There's just no way to pass the namespace prefix map to this databinding expression that I can see. Certainly if the work is done in the code behind, one can use a NamespaceManager and it all works fine. It's that the XmlDataSource control doesn't appear to support the use of one like all the other XPath enabled classes.
Scott Hanselman
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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer’s view in any way.