CODEWITHSUNDEEP
xmlxpath
D.R.
D.R.

Reputation: 21224

XPath relative to a node - how select the current node?

I have a system which evaluates XPath expressions (filters) relative to a node within the XML document. Normally a filter would match some sub node and check whether it exists. E.g., ./div[contains(@class, 'soldout')] to filter out already sold out products.

I now want to express a filter expression based upon the current node. I tried the following:

.[contains(@class, 'soldout')]

But the system tells me that this is no valid XPath.

What's the correct way to express "current node" or "context node"?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 3407

Answers (2)

Michael Kay
Michael Kay

Reputation: 163488

It's an unfortunate bug in the XPath 1.0 grammar that "." and ".." can't be followed by a predicate (this was fixed in 2.0). It arises because of the rule

[4] Step ::=    AxisSpecifier NodeTest Predicate*   
                | AbbreviatedStep

(where an AbbreviatedStep is . or ..)

So although it says in the spec that "." is equivalent to self::node(), that's not strictly true, because self::node() can be followed by a predicate, and . can't.

Upvotes: 2

E.Wiest
E.Wiest

Reputation: 5915

You probably need self axis. It works like this :

path to the node/self::element to evaluate[predicate]

/path to the node/self::*[contains(@class, 'soldout')]

Upvotes: 1

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