I have a hugely nested xml tree that I want to be able to query with xpath and only pick out selected nodes from each section of the tree. For example in the following from each parent node i would like to get childTree > a and c > cb:
<parents>
<parent>
<childTree>
<a></a>
<b></b>
<c>
<ca></ca>
<cb></cb>
</c>
</childTree>
</parent>
<parent>
<childTree>
<a></a>
<b></b>
<c>
<ca></ca>
<cb></cb>
</c>
</childTree>
</parent>
<parent>
<childTree>
<a></a>
<b></b>
<c>
<ca></ca>
<cb></cb>
</c>
</childTree>
</parent>
<parents>
Would the following work for you? In Xpath you can use '|' as a union and do something like this:
//childTree/a|//childTree/c/cb
Related
I am trying to understand the following example
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<c>
<a>
<b att1="5">
<c/>
</b>
<d/>
</a>
<a att1="10">
<d>
<c/>
</d>
<b/>
</a>
</c>
Now I run the XPath query
//*[c]
which I take to mean "All nodes that have a child that is a c". However, this returns only the <b> and <d> nodes that have a <c> child without returning the Document node as I expected. Can anyone explain why?
Because //* equivalent to /descendant-or-self::node()/*. Notice that the document node referenced by self::node() in the previous XPath, so the outer most node selected by that XPath would be the child of the document node (due to /*), which is the root element c, which doesn't have direct child c, hence didn't get selected.
You want /descendant-or-self::node()[c] to include the document node, which is equivalent to //.[c], see the demo.
I need select a specific node name closest to (not needly on) root.
Example:
<root>
<a>
<b id="1"></b>
<b id="2">
<b id="3"></b>
</b>
<c>
<b id="4"></b>
</c>
</a>
</root>
It should select b#1, b#2 and b#4, but not b#2, because it is included inside of another b node.
Currently I'm doing that: select all b, so check if some of parents is b, if yes, discard that. But I do it hardcoded, maybe xpath can solve that alone?
I found the solution, just using not + ancestor, like:
//table[not(ancestor::table)]
I would try below expression-
//b[not(.//ancestor::b)]
It selects-
<b id="1"/>
<b id="4"/>
See live at here.
I have a XPath that must match text and tags, except the tag <aa>; so,
./node()[name()!='aa']
is the correct xpath.
But it is insufficient for cases where tag aa is into the node, I need something like,
./node()[name()!='aa' and not(.//aa)]
but this xpath not works (!).
NOTE
I used
./*[not(self::aa or .//aa)] | ./text()
but it lost the original sequence order of the nodes. This problem is more evident when working with XSLT, example:
<xsl:for-each select="./*[not(self::aa or .//aa)] | ./text()">
<xsl:copy-of select="."/>
<xsl:for-each>
not works as expected (the order of nodes is not ensured). When using ./node() the order is always correct.
PS: with XSLT we have a solution using all the explained xpaths,
<xsl:for-each select="./node()[name()!='aa']">
<xsl:if test="not(.//aa)"><xsl:copy-of select="."/><xsl:if>
<xsl:for-each>
but the ideal/simplest one not works with the same result (when processing big and complex inputs),
<xsl:copy-of select="*[not(self::aa or .//aa)] | ./text()"/>
I'm imagining your file looks like:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<root>
<aa/>
<b>
<aa/>
</b>
<c>
<b>
<aa/>
</b>
</c>
<d/>
<e>
<b/>
</e>
</root>
Then the expression
//node()[not(descendant-or-self::aa)]
returns all nodes (including the whitespace text nodes) that are not themselves an <aa> element or have an <aa> descendant. Children of <aa> are matched as well.
You'll probably want to do something like
<xsl:copy-of select="node()[not(descendant-or-self::aa)]"/>
I have a transform that looks like this
<configuration xmlns:xdt="http://schemas.microsoft.com/XML-Document-Transform">
<a>
<b>
<c>
<d>
<e name="UpdateLanguageProfile">
<f xdt:Transform="Replace" xdt:Locator="Condition(/..#name='UpdateLanguageProfile')">
stuff here
</f>
</e>
</d>
</c>
</b>
</a>
So I want the xdt:Locator to select the f node only if the parent node has an attribute with the specified value.
The xdt:Locator gets translated into the following xpath expression:
/a/b/c/d/e/f[/..#name='UpdateLanguageProfile']
Which is invalid.
So the question is, what could I put in the Condition, that is the XPath square brackets, in order to select the f node based on an attribute in the parent node.
The answer is that the xdt:Locator and the xdt:Transform do not need to be on the same node. They just happen to be on the same node in every example I've ever seen.
You can do this:
<configuration xmlns:xdt="http://schemas.microsoft.com/XML-Document-Transform">
<a>
<b>
<c>
<d>
<e name="UpdateLanguageProfile" xdt:Locator="Match(name)">
<f xdt:Transform="Replace">
stuff here
</f>
</e>
</d>
</c>
</b>
</a>
<parent>
...
<child>foo</child>
<child current="true">current</child>
<child>bar</child>
...
</parent>
How would I get the values of the children before and after the #current child (i.e. output foo and bar)? I'll be outputting Prev/Next links using those values. Thanks!
child[#current='true']/preceding-sibling::child[1]
child[#current='true']/following-sibling::child[1]