Question

Can I find one XML node with the most children with XPath?

<xml>
  <node id="1">
    <child />
  <node>
  <node id="2">
    <child /><child />
  <node>
  <node id="3">
    <child /><child />
  <node>
  <node id="4">
    <child /><child /><child />
  <node>
  <node id="5">
    <child /><child /><child />
  <node>
</xml>

I would like to select either node 4 or node 5 with a single, pure XPath 1.0 expression.

Answer 1

I think that it is impossible because to count children you need function count() which has one parameter – node-set and returns count of elements in this set. So you have no option how to count more node-sets than one to get max value.

Note: I am talking about XPath 1.0