001    /*
002     * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
003     * or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file
004     * distributed with this work for additional information
005     * regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file
006     * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the  "License");
007     * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
008     * You may obtain a copy of the License at
009     *
010     *     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
011     *
012     * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
013     * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
014     * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
015     * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
016     * limitations under the License.
017     */
018    /*
019     * $Id: XPathFactory.java 468655 2006-10-28 07:12:06Z minchau $
020     */
021    package org.apache.xpath;
022    
023    import javax.xml.transform.SourceLocator;
024    
025    import org.apache.xml.utils.PrefixResolver;
026    
027    /**
028     * Factory class for creating an XPath.  Implementors of XPath derivatives
029     * will need to make a derived class of this.
030     * @xsl.usage advanced
031     */
032    public interface XPathFactory
033    {
034    
035      /**
036       * Create an XPath.
037       *
038       * @param exprString The XPath expression string.
039       * @param locator The location of the expression string, mainly for diagnostic
040       *                purposes.
041       * @param prefixResolver This will be called in order to resolve prefixes 
042       *        to namespace URIs.
043       * @param type One of {@link org.apache.xpath.XPath#SELECT} or 
044       *             {@link org.apache.xpath.XPath#MATCH}.
045       *
046       * @return an XPath ready for execution.
047       */
048      XPath create(String exprString, SourceLocator locator,
049                   PrefixResolver prefixResolver, int type);
050    }