Question

Is it possible to get whole xpath through powershell if we pass select all attribute with the given name?

My xml file has an attribute named lang. I use to find the attribute value by //@lang.

If i can get full xpath [ like /root/child/@attribute ) it will avoid confusion.

Answer 1

No.

.NET has no “given a node, create an XPath expression” function. While in theory this is easy (iterate to parents, getting the cardinal number of the sibling at each level to create /node[n]/node[n]/...) in practice such XPath expressions are useless because they are tied to the specific document.

Another document of matching schema is likely to have a different number of children at each level and maybe different ordering; such an XPath will not find the equivalent node.

Consider:

<root>
 <child1 attr1='foo'/>
</root>

and

<root>
 <child1 attr1='bar'/>
 <child1 attr1='foo'/>
</root>

the expression /root/child1[1]/@attr1 generated from the first document will find a different – albeit similar – node in the second.