Selecting descendant with specific name and attribute

EastvanAxon · February 20th, 2015, 06:20 PM

I want to select all descendant nodes of "first" nodes that are "third" nodes and which attribute name is equal "this"

I'm trying to do that by using the XPath

root/first/descendant::node()[name()='third' and current()/@name='this']

but it does not appear to work.

In other words I would like to select the node "<third name="this"/>" in the tree below (the tree is just an example, I do not know in advance what nodes are nested in "first" nodes)

Code:

<root><first name="1"><second1 name="a"><third name="this"/></second1>
<second2 name="b"/>
<second1 name="c"/>
</first>
<first name="2"><second3 name="d"/>
<second4 name="e"/>
<second1 name="f"/>
</first>
</root>

Thanks for your help, and excuse me if the question sounds silly :)

samjudson · February 21st, 2015, 08:34 AM

current() gives you the context from outside the predicate - in this instance probably the document root, so current()/@name will never exist.

Just [name()='third' and @name='this'] should work fine I think.

EastvanAxon · February 21st, 2015, 10:58 AM

You are right! It was indeed a silly question with a very simple solution that I couldn't see myself :)

Thanks a lot!

joefawcett · February 25th, 2015, 05:01 AM

Instead of testing whether the node is named 'third' why not just search for:

Code:

root/first/descendant::third[@name = 'this']