Does anyone do DOM navigation anymore?

[Derek Fountain]

I've spent the last few days tinkering with DOM trees and the DOM API. A couple of years back I wrote a fairly complex application which found the data it required using this nextSibling, firstChild, sort of navigation. I recall the development experience wasn't a terribly happy one, and I have always presumed that XPATH was largely invented to get past all this mucking about.

So it occurs to me to ask: do people still use the original DOM style navigation? When is it preferable to XPATH? Why, in short, is the whole "document hopping" idea not deprecated?!

 

[Martin Honnen]

I've spent the last few days tinkering with DOM trees and the DOM API. A couple of years back I wrote a fairly complex application which found the data it required using this nextSibling, firstChild, sort of navigation. I recall the development experience wasn't a terribly happy one, and I have always presumed that XPATH was largely invented to get past all this mucking about.

So it occurs to me to ask: do people still use the original DOM style navigation? When is it preferable to XPATH? Why, in short, is the whole "document hopping" idea not deprecated?!

DOM contrary to XPath not only allows navigating the document but also changing it (you can add nodes, delete nodes, move nodes etc.). And often you have only a DOM core implementation and no XPath available. Of course if you have XPath on top of or in addition to DOM then it is in most cases easier to navigate to a node with XPath.

 

[Andy Dingley]

So it occurs to me to ask: do people still use the original DOM style navigation? When is it preferable to XPATH?

XPath returns you a node set, nextSibling returns a node.