Strange behaviour with CachedXPathAPI

[Jag Bains]

Hi,
I have a strange problem when using CachedXPathAPI.selectNodeList(node, nodeName);
If the nodename is replace with a string literal e.g

nodelist = cachedXPathAPI.selectNodeList(node,"//ROW");

or with a variable name that uses a literal e.g

String nodeName = "//ROW";nodelist = cachedXPathAPI.selectNodeList(node,nodeName);

Then the nodelist is retured perfectly fine.
However, if the nodeName comes from a hashMap e.g.

String nodeName = (String)hashMap.get("NODENAME");nodelist = cachedXPathAPI.selectNodeList(node,nodeName);

then I get the following exception:

org.apache.xpath.XPathException: Can not convert #STRING to a NodeList!

Has anyone got any ideas why this is happening or how I can get around it?
Thanks
Jag

[Anonymous]

Hi Jag,
If you add a debug statement showing the value of your string (coming from the hashmap), you may discover that the problem is not with the XPathAPI but rather with the value you assign to the "NODENAME" key.
Regards

[Jag Bains]

yes you are right. The value in my hashmap actually had " a round the text.
Stupid me.
Jag