Querying files stored in eXist-db with XQuery

Question

I've used one XML database eXist-db to do some XQuery testing. I have an xml collection called "media_data_101109.xml", and I've put it in direcotry

/db/wb/portfolio/media_data_101109.xml

Then I went to the eXist Sandbox, which is a GUI for doing XQuery, and type in the following XQuery:

let $mediaNodes := doc('db/wb/portfolio/media_data_101109.xml')
return $mediaNodes//media[contains(@product,"wb")]

but it failed to retrieve any results back.

However, if I prepend the server name in front of the URI string like:

 let $mediaNodes := doc('http://localhost:8080/exist/rest/db/portfolio/media_data_101109.xml')

Then it worked fine (though a bit slow).

As I remembered, the first XQuery worked perfectly fine in the past, but since yesterday, it failed to retrieve any thing unless I specify the server name in the URI string.

Could anybody give me some idea on where things might went wrong here? I thought there might be some problems with my port settings? So the eXist-db might not be normally rnning?Thanks in advance.

Try adding a forward slash before "db" in your path: doc('/db/wb/portfolio/media_data_101109.xml') — Daniel Haley

Unknown Unknown · Accepted Answer · 2010-12-30T17:11:57

The Base URI from the Static Context is used for the resolution of relative URI.

If your XQuery has no URI (because is built dynamically, because you didn't save it jet as a resource with the GUI, etc.), then you need to explicity define a Base URI.

From http://www.w3.org/TR/2010/REC-xquery-20101214/#id-base-uri-decl

[Definition: A base URI declaration specifies the base URI property of the static context. The base URI property is used when resolving relative URIs within a module.] For example, the fn:doc function resolves a relative URI using the base URI of the calling module.

The following is an example of a base URI declaration:
declare base-uri "http://example.org";

Querying files stored in eXist-db with XQuery

2 Answers