saxon:import-query

The saxon:import-query element is a top-level declaration that causes an XQuery library module to be imported into the stylesheet.

Category: declaration
Content: none
Permitted parent elements: xsl:stylesheet ; xsl:transform

Attributes

Saxon availability

Requires Saxon-PE or Saxon-EE. Available for all platforms.

Details

The namespace attribute is required, and identifies the module namespace of the XQuery library module to be imported.

The location of the XQuery library module can be provided in one of two ways:

1. In Saxon-EE, XQuery library modules can be compiled (from a Java application) using the XQueryCompiler.compileLibrary() method, and can then be made available to an XSLT compiler using the XsltCompiler.importXQueryEnvironment() method.
2. Alternatively, the href attribute can be used to specify the location of the source code of the XQuery library module. (The href attribute is ignored if a compiled version of the library is known to the compiler.)

The effect is that the public functions and variables declared in the library module become available for reference from any XPath expression in the stylesheet. They are available in all modules of the stylesheet.

Only the functions and variables actually defined in the given XQuery module become available for reference. Functions and variables that the specified module imports from other XQuery modules are not imported (though they can be referenced indirectly). This follows the semantics of XQuery's import module declaration.

Functions and variable annotated as %private are not imported.

The imported functions and variables do not have any specific import precedence. A static error occurs if the import leads to any duplicated function or variable names.

The saxon:import-xquery declaration has two optional attributes. The href attribute is the (absolute or relative) URI of the XQuery module. The namespace attribute identifies the module namespace of the imported module. If href alone is specified, then the module is loaded from the given location. If namespace alone is specified, then the module must already be present in Saxon's Configuration object (you can share a Configuration between multiple stylesheets, which means that imported XQuery modules will not need to be recompiled for each one). If both attributes are specified, then Saxon uses an already-loaded module for the namespace if it can, otherwise it fetches it from the specified location, and checks that the namespace is correct. It is recommended to specify both attributes.

Stylesheets using saxon:import-query cannot be exported to SEF files.