assertXpathEvaluatesTo and default namespace

Hello,

I want to create a test which checks for atribute value. The XML uses a namespace. The test bellow fails. Why?

    @Test
    public void checkVersion() throws ParserConfigurationException, SAXException, IOException, XpathException {
        String t = "<a xmlns=\&quot;http://www.acme.com\&quot;><b c='cv'>bv</b></a>";
       
        Document d = XMLUnit.buildControlDocument(t);
        HashMap m = new HashMap();
        m.put("", "http://www.acme.com");

        NamespaceContext ctx = new SimpleNamespaceContext(m);
        XpathEngine engine = XMLUnit.newXpathEngine();
        engine.setNamespaceContext(ctx);
       
        XMLAssert.assertXpathEvaluatesTo("bv", "//b", d);
    }

Thanks for any input,
Borut

Well, if i am not mistake, you need to have something for your prefix. Empty string will not cut it. I would do this:

m.put("ns1", "http://www.acme.com");

Then, you would need to change you xpath expression:

XMLAssert.assertXpathEvaluatesTo("bv", "//ns1:b", d);

Or you can rewrite the above to look like this :

@Test
public void checkVersion() throws ParserConfigurationException, SAXException, IOException, XpathException {
    String t = "<a xmlns=\"http://www.acme.com\"><b c='cv'>bv</b></a>";
    XMLUnit.getControlDocumentBuilderFactory().setNamespaceAware(false);
    XMLAssert.assertXpathEvaluatesTo("bv", "//b", d);
}

Note, all credit goes to http://blog.davber.com/2006/09/17/xpath-with-namespaces-in-java/

- Stefan Baramov

Thanks, Stefan.  The davber post made me try

//:b

as XPath expression (note the colon with no prefix) and at least with standard JAXP libs it seems to work as well.

Your "use any namespace prefix" advice is exactly what I did in the testcase in svn to show that it worked.

I cannot find any explicit documentation that says you must use namespace prefixes in the XPath expression if your document is using namespaces, but it seems to be true nonetheless.