Hi,

Please, could you help me to understand what the following xpath expressions really mean? I think I am misunderstanding what they mean.

1 - <xsl:if test="parent::* and count(parent::*/*)>1">

(*) Does 'parent::*' mean go to the parent element and down to the first child of the parent element?

Or does it mean go to parent and get all the children of the parent element?

(*/*) What about 'parent::*/*' Does it mean go to parent and then down to the first child and then to its children and check if count is greater than one?

2 - <xsl:if test="*">

Does '*' mean check if the current element has a child node?


Thanks for you help

Cheers,

CPall

1 - <xsl:if test="parent::* and count(parent::*/*)>1">

(*) Does 'parent::*' mean go to the parent element and down to the first child of the parent element?

No. It means select the parent element, whatever its name.

parent::*/* is short for parent::*/child::*, which selects the parent element whatever its name, and then selects all the child elements (of the parent), again regardless of their element name.

2 - <xsl:if test="*">

Does '*' mean check if the current element has a child node?

That's the effect, but only indirectly. * is short for child::*, which selects all the child elements of the context node. Used in a boolean context, a node-set is true if it is non-empty. So you are testing whether the node-set consisting of all the child elements is non-empty.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
Author, XSLT Programmer's Reference and XPath 2.0 Programmer's Reference

Hi Michael,

Thanks a lot for you explanation. It is a lot clearer to me now.

There is only one thing I am still not sure about as follows:

if I have a xml document that looks like that:

<companystaff name="TEST" email="" >
    <companystaff department="DEV" name="" email="">
      <companystaff name="Web" email="">
        <companystaff name="Controls" email="">
          <companystaff name="User" email="" />
          <companystaff name="Server" email="" />
        </companystaff>
      </companystaff>
    </companystaff>
    <companystaff department="WebModules" name="" email="">
</companystaff>

'
parent::*/* is short for parent::*/child::*, which selects the parent element whatever its name, and then selects all the child elements (of the parent), again regardless of their element name.
'
If my current node is the first child of the document element -

<companystaff department="DEV" name="" email="">

then this expression parent::*/* will take me to the parent node (document element) and select
these <companystaff department="DEV" name="" email=""> and <companystaff department="WebModules" name="" email="">

Is that right?

What about if I want to select all the children and grandchildren and so on of the parent? I thought this -parent::*/* - would select all the children and grandchildren. Therefore, I was wrong and thank you for your help.

Cheers

CPall

To select all the descendants of the parent, do parent::*/descendant::* (or ..//* in the abbreviated form)

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
Author, XSLT Programmer's Reference and XPath 2.0 Programmer's Reference

Thanks again Michael.

This helped me a lot