Question

How do you fetch records that contain a node that is a prefix to a string you are searching for?

XML looks like this:

<records>
  <record>
    <name>foo</name>
    <prefix>abc</prefix>
  </record>
  <record>
    <name>bar</name>
    <prefix>def</prefix>
  </record>
  <record>
    <name>bar</name>
    <prefix>abc.123</prefix>
  </record>
</records>

So if I have string “abc.123.xyz”, I would fetch the first and third records.

Roughly translated to “/records/record[prefix[is-contained-in?(‘abc.123.xyz’)]]”

Any XPath functions that I see work the other way around (starts-with, contains), where you specify the substring instead of the node containing the substring.

Answer 1

This matches record nodes in your sample:

 <xsl:template match="/">
      <xsl:apply-templates select="/records/record[starts-with(./prefix, substring-before('abc.123.xyz','.'))]"/>
 </xsl:template>

substring-before