Saxon

It looks to me as if you've got an expression which, if evaluated, will return exactly the node tree you are looking for (though I have to say, I don't fully understand where it came from). But somewhere along the line, the node tree returned by this expression is being flattened to a string. So it's a question of finding out where that is happening. How are you evaluating the expression?

Actually, I'll correct my earlier statement, for this example I'm not using makeExpression, I'm doing this: Expression expression = ((StyleElement) nodeInfo).compile(exec, decl);

The expression is being passed to setArguments as part of the Expression[]. Evaluation happens outside of my code (I assume using whatever default there is for that type of expression) and then is passed in as part of the Sequence[] to my call function.

My code, in the hopes that it will provide some clarity: Here's my compile method: public final Expression compile(final Executable exec, final Declaration decl) throws XPathException {

   //Enable logging
    org.apache.log4j.BasicConfigurator.configure();
    Logger.getRootLogger().setLevel(org.apache.log4j.Level.DEBUG);

    final AxisIterator kids = iterateAxis(AxisInfo.CHILD);
   
    NodeInfo nodeInfo = (NodeInfo) kids.next();
    
    final XdmNode node = new XdmNode(nodeInfo);
    LOG.debug("original node is " + node.toString());
    Expression expression  = ((StyleElement) nodeInfo).compile(exec, decl);
    LOG.debug("my expression is " + expression.toString());
   
    return new PostInstruction(this.href, this.headers, this.wrap,
                                this.timeout, this.debug, expression);
}

The constructor for my simple expression: public PostInstruction(final Expression href, final Map<String, Expression> headers, final Expression wrap, final Expression timeout, final Expression debug, Expression nodeEx ) { Expression[] sub = {href, wrap, timeout, debug, nodeEx}; setArguments(sub); this.headers = headers; }

And then my call (trimmed down to only the relevant parts):

public Sequence call( final XPathContext context, final Sequence[] arguments) throws XPathException {

        // Handle attributes
        final String href = arguments[HREF].head().getStringValue();
        final String wrap = arguments[WRAP].head().getStringValue();
        final String timeout = arguments[TIMEOUT].head().getStringValue();
        final String debug = arguments[DEBUG].head().getStringValue();
       
       // Handle entity
        String nodeString = "";
        if(arguments[ENTITY] != null) {
            nodeString = arguments[ENTITY].head().getStringValue();
            LOG.debug("entity sequence as a string " + arguments[ENTITY].toString());
            LOG.debug("entity sequence head as a string " + nodeString);
        }
 }

The results of the logging statements when I run:

73 [main] DEBUG org.highwire.saxon.http.api.HTTPPost null - original node is <db:batch xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:http="http://www.highwire.org/saxon/http" xmlns:db="http://schema.highwire.org/SQL/batch" dbname="{$dbname}"> db:query db:sqlcreate table <xsl:value-of select="$table-name"/> (resource_key int)</db:sql> </db:query> db:query db:sql select * from <xsl:value-of select="$table-name"/> </db:sql> </db:query> db:query db:sqldrop table <xsl:value-of select="$table-name"/> </db:sql> </db:query> </db:batch> 76 [main] DEBUG org.highwire.saxon.http.api.HTTPPost null - my expression is FixedElement(Block(FixedAttribute(string-join(convertItems(data(mergeAdjacentText($dbname))), " ")), FixedElement(FixedElement(Block(ValueOf("create table "), ValueOf(string-join(convertItems(data(mergeAdjacentText($$))), " ")), ValueOf(" (resource_key int)")))), FixedElement(FixedElement(Block(ValueOf(" select * from "), ValueOf(string-join(convertItems(data(mergeAdjacentText($$))), " "))))), FixedElement(FixedElement(Block(ValueOf("drop table "), ValueOf(string-join(convertItems(data(mergeAdjacentText($$))), " "))))))) 230 [main] DEBUG org.highwire.saxon.http.api.HTTPPost null - entity sequence as a string net.sf.saxon.tree.tiny.TinyElementImpl@20400b 230 [main] DEBUG org.highwire.saxon.http.api.HTTPPost null - entity sequence head as a string create table #24071f68c4c (resource_key int) select * from #24071f68c4cdrop table #24071f68c4c

I think the problem is here:

nodeString = arguments[ENTITY].head().getStringValue();

That call on getStringValue() is taking the node tree and giving you the string value of the node at the root of this tree, as if you called the string() function.

If you want the XML serialization of the node, ie. a string containing start and end tags, the simplest way is probably (and non-obviously) to extract the NodeInfo object, and pass it to the static method net.sf.saxon.query.QueryResult.serialize().

Thank you, Dr. Kay, that worked perfectly!