SAXONICA

Saxon Documentation
Full Contents
About Saxon
Changes in this Release
Conditions of Use
Using XSLT 2.0
Using XQuery
Handling Source Documents
XML Schema Processing
The XPath API
Saxon on .NET
Extensibility
| Introduction
| Writing extension functions in Java
» | Converting Arguments to Java Extension Functions
| Converting the Result of a Java Extension Function
| Writing extension instructions
| Writing input filters
| Writing output filters
| Implementing a collating sequence
| Localizing numbers and dates
| Adding an output encoding
| Writing a URI Resolver for Input Files
| Writing a URI Resolver for Output Files
Saxon Extensions
Sample Saxon Applications
The Saxon SQL Extension
XSLT Elements
XPath 2.0 Expression Syntax
Function Library
Standards Conformance

# Converting Nodes and Sequences of Nodes

If the expected type is a generic collection type, or an array of the Saxon class `NodeInfo`, or a `Value` or `SequenceIterator`, Saxon will pass the nodes supplied in the call in their native Saxon representation.

Saxon recognizes methods that expect nodes in an external object model (DOM, JDOM, or XOM) only if the supporting JAR file is on the classpath (that is, saxon8-dom.jar, saxon8-jdom.jar, or saxon8-xom.jar). In all three cases, if the XPath node is actually a view of a DOM, JDOM, or XOM node, then the underlying node will be passed to the method. If the XPath node is a text node that maps to a sequence of adjacent text and/or CDATA nodes in the underlying model, the first node in this sequence will be passed to the extension function.

In addition, in the case of DOM only (but only if saxon8-dom.jar is on the classpath), if the XPath node is not a view of a DOM node, Saxon will create a DOM wrapper for the native Saxon node, and pass this wrapper. This is also done if the required type is a DOM NodeList. Note that the wrapper is a read-only DOM implementation: any attempt to update nodes through the wrapper interface will throw an exception. A consequence of the way the wrapping works is that it's not safe to rely on object identity when testing node identity - the same node can be represented by more than one Java object. Use the DOM method `isSameNode()` instead.

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