Question

I’m trying to find every reference to a node (report) that does not have a child node (property) with a specific attributes values.

My xml is:

<report xmlns="http://www.eclipse.org/birt/2005/design">
<property name="comments">comment</property>
<property name="test">sdcs</property>
<property name="eventHandlerClass">sdcs</property>
</report>

and my XPath is:

/*[local-name()='report'][not(/*[local-name()='property'][@name='eventHandlerClass'])]

Problem is, it is returning the report when I’m looking for it to not return anything.

Any idea’s on the best way to do this?

Answer 1

The problem is that your report contains a property that is not an evenHandlerClass. You want to say there is no such child, which could be done by counting such children and getting zero:

/*[local-name()='report'][count(*[(local-name()='property' and @name="eventHandlerClass")])=0]