Alex Rivera | Logout

XPath to select multiple tags

Asked 2009-04-06T15:18:24.273
175

Given this simplified data format:

<a>
    <b>
        <c>C1</c>
        <d>D1</d>
        <e>E1</e>
        <f>don't select this one</f>
    </b>
    <b>
        <c>C2</c>
        <d>D2</d>
        <e>E1</e>
        <g>don't select me</g>
    </b>
    <c>not this one</c>
    <d>nor this one</d>
    <e>definitely not this one</e>
</a>

How would you select all the Cs, Ds and Es that are children of B elements?

Basically, something like:

a/b/(c|d|e)

In my own situation, instead of just a/b/, the query leading up to selecting those C, D, E nodes is actually quite complex so I'd like to avoid doing this:

a/b/c|a/b/d|a/b/e

Is this possible?

xml xpath
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2 Answers

16

Why not a/b/(c|d|e)? I just tried with Saxon XML library (wrapped up nicely with some Clojure goodness), and it seems to work. abc.xml is the doc described by OP.

(require '[saxon :as xml])
(def abc-doc (xml/compile-xml (slurp "abc.xml")))
(xml/query "a/b/(c|d|e)" abc-doc)
=> (#<XdmNode <c>C1</c>>
    #<XdmNode <d>D1</d>>
    #<XdmNode <e>E1</e>>
    #<XdmNode <c>C2</c>>
    #<XdmNode <d>D2</d>>
    #<XdmNode <e>E1</e>>)
answered 2011-03-30T04:56:17.903
-4

Not sure if this helps, but with XSL, I'd do something like:

<xsl:for-each select="a/b">
    <xsl:value-of select="c"/>
    <xsl:value-of select="d"/>
    <xsl:value-of select="e"/>
</xsl:for-each>

and won't this XPath select all children of B nodes:

a/b/*
answered 2009-04-06T15:38:35.397

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