// Create an object to resolve namespace prefixes.
// XPath namespaces are resolved from the input context node's document element
// if it is a root node, or else the current context node (for lack of a better
// resolution space, given the simplicity of this sample code).
PrefixResolverDefault prefixResolver = new PrefixResolverDefault(
(namespaceNode.getNodeType() == Node.DOCUMENT_NODE)
? ((Document) namespaceNode).getDocumentElement() : namespaceNode);
// Create the XPath object.
XPath xpath = new XPath(str, null, prefixResolver, XPath.SELECT, null);