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/*

 * This file is available under and governed by the GNU General Public

 * License version 2 only, as published by the Free Software Foundation.

 * However, the following notice accompanied the original version of this

 * file and, per its terms, should not be removed:

 *

 * Copyright (c) 2002 World Wide Web Consortium,

 * (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Institut National de

 * Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique, Keio University). All

 * Rights Reserved. This program is distributed under the W3C's Software

 * Intellectual Property License. This program is distributed in the

 * hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even

 * the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR

 * PURPOSE.

 * See W3C License http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/ for more details.

 */

package org.w3c.dom.xpath;

import org.w3c.dom.Node;

import org.w3c.dom.DOMException;

/**

 * The <code>XPathExpression</code> interface represents a parsed and resolved

 * XPath expression.

 * <p>See also the <a href='http://www.w3.org/2002/08/WD-DOM-Level-3-XPath-20020820'>Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3 XPath Specification</a>.

 */

public interface XPathExpression {

    /**

     * Evaluates this XPath expression and returns a result.

     * @param contextNode The <code>context</code> is context node for the

     *   evaluation of this XPath expression.If the XPathEvaluator was

     *   obtained by casting the <code>Document</code> then this must be

     *   owned by the same document and must be a <code>Document</code>,

     *   <code>Element</code>, <code>Attribute</code>, <code>Text</code>,

     *   <code>CDATASection</code>, <code>Comment</code>,

     *   <code>ProcessingInstruction</code>, or <code>XPathNamespace</code>

     *   node.If the context node is a <code>Text</code> or a

     *   <code>CDATASection</code>, then the context is interpreted as the

     *   whole logical text node as seen by XPath, unless the node is empty

     *   in which case it may not serve as the XPath context.

     * @param type If a specific <code>type</code> is specified, then the

     *   result will be coerced to return the specified type relying on

     *   XPath conversions and fail if the desired coercion is not possible.

     *   This must be one of the type codes of <code>XPathResult</code>.

     * @param result The <code>result</code> specifies a specific result

     *   object which may be reused and returned by this method. If this is

     *   specified as <code>null</code>or the implementation does not reuse

     *   the specified result, a new result object will be constructed and

     *   returned.For XPath 1.0 results, this object will be of type

     *   <code>XPathResult</code>.

     * @return The result of the evaluation of the XPath expression.For XPath

     *   1.0 results, this object will be of type <code>XPathResult</code>.

     * @exception XPathException

     *   TYPE_ERR: Raised if the result cannot be converted to return the

     *   specified type.

     * @exception DOMException

     *   WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: The Node is from a document that is not supported

     *   by the XPathEvaluator that created this <code>XPathExpression</code>

     *   .

     *   <br>NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: The Node is not a type permitted as an XPath

     *   context node or the request type is not permitted by this

     *   <code>XPathExpression</code>.

     */

    public Object evaluate(Node contextNode,

                           short type,

                           Object result)

                           throws XPathException, DOMException;

}