XInclude and XPointer example

An Example with XInclude and XPointer and how to reference them using IDs.

Process the file with:

$ xmllint --xinclude article.xml

The file article.xml contains different XIncludes and XPointers:

• xi:include href="author.xml" xpointer="xpointer(element(/1)/*)"/>

  This is kind of what we know from SLE. Here it means: Include the "author.xml" file, start with the root element and return all children

• <xi:include href="author.xml" xpointer="xpointer(id('author')/*)"/>

  Includes the file author.xml, points to the element with the xml:id "author" (that would be <author>, the root element), and return all children.

• xi:include xpointer="xpointer(id('editor')/*)"/>

  This is something special: it doesn't have an href attribute! That means, it points to the current document (which is article.xml). The XPointer points to the element with the xml:id "editor" and returns all it's children.

• <xi:include href="intro.xml" xpointer="xmlns(d=http://docbook.org/ns/docbook)xpointer(id('sec.intro')/*[not(self::d:title)])"/>

  For the XML nerds. ;-) Includes the file intro.xml, and points to the section with the xml:id "sec.intro". Include all elements except the title element. Useful if you want to specify another title. Use sparingly! (The xmlns() expression is needed to define the DocBook 5 namespace for the XPointer.)