    {- |
     - Only a shmall module containing some helper functions to extract xml content
     - I would have added this to Types but I've put it into an additional module
     - to avoid circular references (Verbatim <-> Types)
    -}

    module Text.XML.HaXml.Util
      (
      -- ** utility functions to access XML content
        docContent
      , contentElem
      , attrs
      , tagTextContent
      ) where

    import Text.XML.HaXml.Posn
    import Text.XML.HaXml.Types
    import Text.XML.HaXml.Verbatim

    -- get the main element of the document so that you can apply CFilters directly
    -- i is typically (posInNewCxt "filename" Nothing)
    docContent :: i -> Document i -> Content i
    docContent i (Document _ _ e _) = CElem e i

    -- if you know that your CFilter returns a tag your can use this function to get the tag Element
    contentElem ::  Content i -> Element i
    contentElem (CElem e _) = e
    contentElem _ = error "content is not a CElem"
    attrs :: Element i -> [Attribute]
    attrs ( Elem _ attrs _ ) = attrs
    tagTextContent ((CElem (Elem _ _ cs) _)) = concatMap verbatim cs

    {-
      now you can extract an attribute quite easily:
        let doc = "<xml><a><b a=\"x\">content</b></a></xml>"
        let b = head $ xtract id "a/b" $ docContent (posInNewCxt filename Nothing) $ xmlParse filename doc
        putStrLn $ "attr a of tag b" ++ (show $ lookup "a" $  attrs $ contentElem b)
        putStrLn $ "text content of b :" ++ tagTextContent b
      still (too) much code IMHO
    -}