CODEWITHSUNDEEP
xmlxpathxml-parsing
Alejandro García Iglesias
Alejandro García Iglesias

Reputation: 16412

How to select multiple nodes in different levels?

Having this (simplified) XML:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<kml>
<Document>
        <Placemark>
            <name>Poly 1</name>
            <Polygon>
                        <coordinates>
                            -58.40844625779582,-34.60295278618136,0
                        </coordinates>
            </Polygon>
        </Placemark>
        <Placemark>
            <name>Poly 2</name>
            <Polygon>
                        <coordinates>
                            -58.40414334150432,-34.59992445476809,0
                        </coordinates>
            </Polygon>
        </Placemark>
</Document>
</kml>

How can I select the name and coordinates of each Placemark? Right now I can select their name with the following XPath expression:

//Document//Placemark//name

How can I select both without any other data?

Upvotes: 20

Views: 32579

Answers (3)

luis long
luis long

Reputation: 141

Resolved: //Placemark/*[self::name or descendant::coordinates]

Upvotes: 0

toniedzwiedz
toniedzwiedz

Reputation: 18553

You can use a union in your XPath expression. Just use the operator: |

//Document/Placemark/name | //Document/Placemark/Polygon/coordinates

Don't use the // (descendant axis) if you don't need to. Using //, this would also work: //name | //coordinates. It's better performance-wise to specify the exact path.

Upvotes: 45

Dimitre Novatchev
Dimitre Novatchev

Reputation: 243469

Use:

/*/*/Placemark/name | /*/*/Placemark/*/coordinates

This specifies the union of the results of two separate XPath expressions -- the standard XPath union operator | is used. Selected are all name elements that are children of a Placemark element that is a grandchild of the top element of the XML document, plus all coordinates elements that are grand-children of a Placemark element that is a grandchild of the top element of the XML document.

The selected elements come in document order (although no normative W3C document specifies the order), which means that in the result of the evaluation (usually of type XmlNodeList) any name element is directly followed by its corresponding coordinates element.

Upvotes: 6

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