code: /*
   * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
   * or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file
   * distributed with this work for additional information
   * regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file
   * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the  "License");
   * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
   * You may obtain a copy of the License at
   *
   *     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
   *
   * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
   * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
   * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
   * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
   * limitations under the License.
   */
  /*
   * $Id$
   */
  package org.apache.xpath;
  
  import javax.xml.transform.SourceLocator;
  
  import org.apache.xml.utils.PrefixResolver;
  
  /**
   * Factory class for creating an XPath.  Implementors of XPath derivatives
   * will need to make a derived class of this.
   * @xsl.usage advanced
   */
  public interface XPathFactory
  {
  
    /**
     * Create an XPath.
     *
     * @param exprString The XPath expression string.
     * @param locator The location of the expression string, mainly for diagnostic
     *                purposes.
     * @param prefixResolver This will be called in order to resolve prefixes 
     *        to namespace URIs.
     * @param type One of {@link org.apache.xpath.XPath#SELECT} or 
     *             {@link org.apache.xpath.XPath#MATCH}.
     *
     * @return an XPath ready for execution.
     */
    XPath create(String exprString, SourceLocator locator,
                 PrefixResolver prefixResolver, int type);
  }
  