Question

I’m using feed import module in Drupal 7 cms that accepts xpath directives to map the data for the import. Is it possible to select only part of the atomic value or explode it with xpath?
For example:

<book>
...
<categories>1,4,88</categories>
...
</book> 

Is it possible to get only 1 or 4 or 88 separately with xpath statement?

Answer 1

You can use the substring-before() and substring-after() functions:

• To select 1: substring-before(/book/categories, ',')
• To select 4: substring-before(substring-after(/book/categories, ','), ',')
• To select 88: substring-after(substring-after(/book/categories, ','), ',')

---

With XPath 2.0 you could use the tokenize() function:

• To select 1: tokenize(/book/categories, ',')[1]
• To select 4: tokenize(/book/categories, ',')[2]
• To select 88: tokenize(/book/categories, ',')[3]