Question

I’m not sure how to explain this, so if there’s a better way please let me know.

I have a value that I need to search the XML For, but I want to search for another value before I get my result set.

Let me show you:

<n:TaskGetResponse>
    <MemHead>
        <memidnum>1262753194</memidnum>
        <memrecno>22672100</memrecno>
    </MemHead>
    <MemHead>
        <memidnum>1262753194</memidnum>
        <memrecno>22672104</memrecno>
    </MemHead>
    <EntXtsk>
        <caudrecno>6348855</caudrecno>
        <memrecno>22672100</memrecno>
    </EntXtsk>
    <EntXtsk>
        <caudrecno>6348855</caudrecno>
        <memrecno>22672101</memrecno>
    </EntXtsk>
    <EntXtsk>
        <caudrecno>6348878</caudrecno>
        <memrecno>22672102</memrecno>
    </EntXtsk>
    <MemXtsk>
        <caudrecno>6348878</caudrecno>
        <memrecno>22672103</memrecno>
    </MemXtsk>
</n:TaskGetResponse>

I have the memidnum of 1262753194. I want to find All EntXtsk and MemXtsk that have a memrecno that matches all MemHead’s that have a memidnum of 1262753194.

In this example I have 2 MemHeads that have the same memidnum, but different memrecno (there are 2 memrecno’s to look at). I want to find all *Xtsk that have a memrecno that match the 2.

Is this possible with XPath?

Using

TaskGetResponse/*[name(.) = 'MemXtsk' or name(.) = 'EntXtsk']

I can get all the *Xtsk nodes.

But not sure how to get the ones only associated with the memidnum->memrecno that I need.

Any help would rock.

Update:
I can run

TaskGetResponse/*[memrecno= //TaskGetResponse/*[memidnum="1262753194"]/memrecno]

And that gets me everything with that memrecno combination. But I’m not sure how to say only get me EntXtsk and MemXtsk.

Answer 1

Use:

/*/*[self::EntXtsk or self::MemXtsk]
      [memrecno
      =
       /*/MemHead[memidnum = 1262753194]/memrecno
       ]

This selects any element named EntXtsk or MemXtsk, that is a child of the top element of the XML document, and that has a memrecno child, whose string value is equal to the string value of some memrecno element that is a child of a MemHead element that is a child of the top element in the XML document and that also has a memidnum child whose string value is "1262753194"

XSLT – based verification (I strongly recommend using the XPath Visualizer for any XPath exploration):

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
 xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
 <xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="yes"/>
 <xsl:strip-space elements="*"/>

 <xsl:template match="/">
  <xsl:copy-of select=
   "/*/*[self::EntXtsk or self::MemXtsk]
          [memrecno
          =
           /*/MemHead[memidnum = 1262753194]/memrecno
           ]
   "/>
 </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

when applied on this XML document (the provided one with added one more MemXtsk element at the end):

<n:TaskGetResponse xmlns:n="n">
    <MemHead>
        <memidnum>1262753194</memidnum>
        <memrecno>22672100</memrecno>
    </MemHead>
    <MemHead>
        <memidnum>1262753194</memidnum>
        <memrecno>22672104</memrecno>
    </MemHead>
    <EntXtsk>
        <caudrecno>6348855</caudrecno>
        <memrecno>22672100</memrecno>
    </EntXtsk>
    <EntXtsk>
        <caudrecno>6348855</caudrecno>
        <memrecno>22672101</memrecno>
    </EntXtsk>
    <EntXtsk>
        <caudrecno>6348878</caudrecno>
        <memrecno>22672102</memrecno>
    </EntXtsk>
    <MemXtsk>
        <caudrecno>6348878</caudrecno>
        <memrecno>22672103</memrecno>
    </MemXtsk>
    <MemXtsk>
        <caudrecno>6348879</caudrecno>
        <memrecno>22672104</memrecno>
    </MemXtsk>
</n:TaskGetResponse>

evaluates the XPath expression and copies to the output the selected nodes:

<EntXtsk xmlns:n="n">
   <caudrecno>6348855</caudrecno>
   <memrecno>22672100</memrecno>
</EntXtsk>
<MemXtsk xmlns:n="n">
   <caudrecno>6348879</caudrecno>
   <memrecno>22672104</memrecno>
</MemXtsk>