Question

I have an XML collection like this:

<test>
   <test1></test1>
   <test2></test2>
   <test3>
      <bla1></bla1>
      <bla2></bla2>
   </test3>
   <test3></test3>
</test>

I want to get all the nodes except for the test3 nodes. I have tried /*[not(name()='test3')], but it does not work.

Also, is it possible with XPath to add a node to an XML collection? How can I do this?

Say I have XML like this:

<rootnode>
  <node1></node1>
</rootnode>

and I want to add another node. How can I do this with XPath, or is this impossible?

I want to get all the nodes except for the test3 nodes (and its innernodes). so if there is a <bla> in test2, I want to get it.

Finally, say that I want to filter the test3 nodes by index. So I want to remove all test3 nodes except for the first one (or the second or third, defined by the index I give).

How would one do this?

Answer 1

1: You were only searching the root, but not the descendant nodes. Also, the name() check should be avoided because it is unreliable when prefixes and namespaces are being used. Try this:

//*[not(ancestor-or-self::test3)]

2: XPath is querying XML only. However, there ar related technologies such as XSLT and XQuery which allow the transformation of XML. Or you can use a DOM in a programming language where you use XPath to identify the nodes and then operations on the DOM to modify them.