From: Robert Klemme <shortcutter@...>
Date: 2008-08-12T01:42:44+09:00
Subject: Re: Using XPath to retrieve an XML element which contains a given text

On 11.08.2008 17:11, Robert Klemme wrote:
> I believe "contains" is the wrong function as it does a textual
> comparison and I have no idea whether a node is actually allowed as
> input. I believe the correct XPath expression is this:

Wait, change "correct" to "more appropriate".

> "//dataformat[descendant::fileidentifier[text()='SPPT']]"
> 
> Here are some expressions that you may want to try:

Here are even more that yield the result you want (or so I believe):

[
   "//dataformat[descendant::fileidentifier[text()='SPPT']]",
   "//dataformat[fileidentifiers/fileidentifier[text()='SPPT']]",
   "//dataformat[descendant::fileidentifier[contains(text(),'SPPT')]]",
   "//dataformat[fileidentifiers/fileidentifier[contains(text(),'SPPT')]]",
   "//dataformat[descendant::fileidentifier[starts-with(text(),'SPPT')]]",
 
"//dataformat[fileidentifiers/fileidentifier[starts-with(text(),'SPPT')]]",
   "//dataformat[descendant::fileidentifier[ends-with(text(),'SPPT')]]",
   "//dataformat[fileidentifiers/fileidentifier[ends-with(text(),'SPPT')]]",
].each do |xpath|
   printf "\nXPath: %p\n\n", xpath

   XPath.each doc, xpath do |elm|
     puts elm
   end
end

Interestingly ends-with() does not seem to work.  Maybe we hit a REXML bug.

XPath nicely fits Ruby because of TIMTOWTDI. :-)

Kind regards

	robert