From: anne001 <anne@...>
Date: 2008-08-11T08:42:46+09:00
Subject: Re: Using XPath to retrieve an XML element which contains a given 	text

Thank you, the first formulation works.

I had tried the second one on the complete xml file and it does not
work.
Do you have an idea why? Is there a typo I am not seeing?

Here is a test file a little closer to the XML file I am working with

require "rexml/document"
include REXML

string = <<EOF
<dataformats>
	<dataformat>
		<name>NARSAD recognition</name>
		<fileidentifiers>
			<fileidentifier>NARSAD</fileidentifier>
		</fileidentifiers>
	</dataformat>
	<dataformat>
		<name>SPFT</name>
		<fileidentifiers>
			<fileidentifier>SPFT</fileidentifier>
			<fileidentifier>SPPT</fileidentifier>
		</fileidentifiers>
	</dataformat>
</dataformats>
EOF

doc = Document.new string

xpathquery="//dataformat[contains(., 'SPPT')]"
p 'yours1'
p XPath.first(doc,xpathquery).to_s

xpathquery="//dataformat[contains(fileidentifiers/
fileidentifier,'SPPT')]"
p 'yours2'
p XPath.first(doc,xpathquery).to_s

result
"yours1"
"<dataformat>\n\t\t<name>SPFT</name>\n\t\t<fileidentifiers>\n\t\t
\t<fileidentifier>SPFT</fileidentifier>\n\t\t\t<fileidentifier>SPPT</
fileidentifier>\n\t\t</fileidentifiers>\n\t</dataformat>"
"yours2"
""