Question

I’m trying to figure out how to use a Xpath expression to verify that there is only one matching node in an XPath expression. Here is some sample XML:

<a>
  <b>
    <c>X:1 Y:0</c>
    <c>X:1 Y:0</c>
    <c>X:2 Y:0</c>
  </b>
  <b>
    <c>X:1 Y:0</c>
    <c>X:2 Y:0</c>
  </b>
</a>

So, I tried code similar to this, but it doesn’t work:

XPathFactory factory = XPathFactory.newInstance();
XPath xpath = factory.newXPath();
try {           
    XPathExpression expr = xpath.compile( "count(//a/b/c)" ) );
} catch ( XPathExpressionException e ) {
    printErr( e );
}
if ( expr == true ) {
  // edit XML node
}

There is supposedly a way for the count expression to return a Boolean = true . How do I get this?

Answer 1

Maybe something like this:

XPathExpression xpr = xpath.compile("count(//a/b/c)");
System.out.println(xpr.evaluate(n, XPathConstants.NUMBER));

xpr = xpath.compile("count(//a/b/c) = 5");
System.out.println(xpr.evaluate(n, XPathConstants.BOOLEAN));

where n is a Node/Element from your document

First prints 5.0, second prints true