/* XPathExpression.java --
   Copyright (C) 2004, 2005  Free Software Foundation, Inc.

This file is part of GNU Classpath.

GNU Classpath is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
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02110-1301 USA.

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permission to link this library with independent modules to produce an
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package javax.xml.xpath;

import javax.xml.namespace.QName;
import org.xml.sax.InputSource;

/**
 * An XPath expression.
 *
 * @author (a href='mailto:dog@gnu.org'>Chris Burdess</a)
 * @since 1.3
 */
public interface XPathExpression
{

  /**
   * Evaluates this expression against the specified context.
   * @param item the evaluation context
   * @param returnType the desired return type
   */
  Object evaluate(Object item,
                  QName returnType)
    throws XPathExpressionException;

  /**
   * Evaluates this expression against the specified context, returning the
   * result as a string.
   * @param item the evaluation context
   */
  String evaluate(Object item)
    throws XPathExpressionException;

  /**
   * Evaluates this expression against the specified context.
   * @param source the source to load the context from
   * @param returnType the desired return type
   */
  Object evaluate(InputSource source,
                  QName returnType)
    throws XPathExpressionException;

  /**
   * Evaluates this expression against the specified context, returning the
   * result as a string.
   * @param source the source to load the context from
   */
  String evaluate(InputSource source)
    throws XPathExpressionException;

}