NAME

       XML::LibXML::Pattern - XML::LibXML::Pattern - interface to libxml2 XPath patterns

SYNOPSIS

         use XML::LibXML;
         my $pattern = XML::LibXML::Pattern->new('/x:html/x:body//x:div', { 'x' => 'http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml' });
         # test a match on an XML::LibXML::Node $node

         if ($pattern->matchesNode($node)) { ... }

         # or on an XML::LibXML::Reader

         if ($reader->matchesPattern($pattern)) { ... }

         # or skip reading all nodes that do not match

         print $reader->nodePath while $reader->nextPatternMatch($pattern);

         $pattern = XML::LibXML::Pattern->new( pattern, { prefix => namespace_URI, ... } );
         $bool = $pattern->matchesNode($node);

DESCRIPTION

       This is a perl interface to libxml2's pattern matching support
       http://xmlsoft.org/html/libxml-pattern.html. This feature requires recent versions of
       libxml2.

       Patterns are a small subset of XPath language, which is limited to (disjunctions of)
       location paths involving the child and descendant axes in abbreviated form as described by
       the extended BNF given below:

         Selector ::=     Path ( '|' Path )*
         Path     ::=     ('.//' | '//' | '/' )? Step ( '/' Step )*
         Step     ::=     '.' | NameTest
         NameTest ::=     QName | '*' | NCName ':' '*'

       For readability, whitespace may be used in selector XPath expressions even though not
       explicitly allowed by the grammar: whitespace may be freely added within patterns before
       or after any token, where

         token     ::=     '.' | '/' | '//' | '|' | NameTest

       Note that no predicates or attribute tests are allowed.

       Patterns are particularly useful for stream parsing provided via the "XML::LibXML::Reader"
       interface.

       new()
             $pattern = XML::LibXML::Pattern->new( pattern, { prefix => namespace_URI, ... } );

           The constructor of a pattern takes a pattern expression (as described by the BNF
           grammar above) and an optional HASH reference mapping prefixes to namespace URIs. The
           method returns a compiled pattern object.

           Note that if the document has a default namespace, it must still be given an prefix in
           order to be matched (as demanded by the XPath 1.0 specification). For example, to
           match an element "<a xmlns="http://foo.bar"</a>", one should use a pattern like this:

             $pattern = XML::LibXML::Pattern->new( 'foo:a', { foo => 'http://foo.bar' });

       matchesNode($node)
             $bool = $pattern->matchesNode($node);

           Given an XML::LibXML::Node object, returns a true value if the node is matched by the
           compiled pattern expression.

SEE ALSO

       XML::LibXML::Reader for other methods involving compiled patterns.

AUTHORS

       Matt Sergeant, Christian Glahn, Petr Pajas

VERSION

       2.0128

COPYRIGHT

       2001-2007, AxKit.com Ltd.

       2002-2006, Christian Glahn.

       2006-2009, Petr Pajas.

LICENSE

       This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same
       terms as Perl itself.