Re: XPATH total count of multiple child nodes

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Subject: Re: XPATH total count of multiple child nodes
From: Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 03 May 2005 13:31:22 -0400

Edward,

At 01:22 PM 5/3/2005, you wrote:

My new problem is that I am trying to build a conditional statement based on a count of the number of child elements. There is an element "dates" that contains child elements containing particular dates. Normally, I would use something like:

Check if any of them exisit at all...

<xsl:if test="(filed) or (decided) or (submitted) or (revised) or (term)">

then, see if there is more than one of them ...

<xsl:if test="count(date) > 1">

However, the child elements do not all have the same name. They can have one of five different names (filed, decided, submitted, revised, or term), which may appear in almost any combination. There are no other child elements, so I was hoping there was a simple way to count the total number of child elements without specifying them by name?

Sure, that's simply "child::*" ("*" is a node test that matches any element, or more correctly, any element except when on the attribute and namespace axes, wherein it matches an attribute or a namespace node), which is long for "*". So you need

<xsl:match="dates">
  ... whatever you do for the wrapper if anything ...
  <xsl:if test="*">
    ... whatever you do now you know there are children ...
  </xsl:if>
</xsl:match>

Note that ordinarily we don't have to conduct this test, however, since apply-templates just traverses to whatever child elements we have (or actually, to child nodes of any type). There are cases, however, when you may have

<dates></dates>

and you want to distinguish that case. You can also test="not(*)" which will be true if you *don't* have any child elements.

Similarly, count(*) returns a number representing how many child elements you have, so you could test="count(*) > 2" which tests true when there are three or more element children.

If you also need to test for comments or processing instructions, another node test is "node()" -- in XPath, child::node() will return all child nodes of whatever type, not just elements.

Enjoy,
Wendell


======================================================================
Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Mulberry Technologies, Inc.                http://www.mulberrytech.com
17 West Jefferson Street                    Direct Phone: 301/315-9635
Suite 207                                          Phone: 301/315-9631
Rockville, MD  20850                                 Fax: 301/315-8285
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  Mulberry Technologies: A Consultancy Specializing in SGML and XML
======================================================================

Current Thread
XPATH total count of multiple child nodes Edward Bryant - 3 May 2005 17:23:03 -0000 Michael Kay - 3 May 2005 17:36:49 -0000 Wendell Piez - 3 May 2005 17:43:57 -0000 <= Message not available Ramkumar Menon - 3 May 2005 17:47:45 -0000 David Carlisle - 3 May 2005 21:14:32 -0000

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RE: XPATH total count of mult, Michael Kay	Thread	Re: XPATH total count of mult, Ramkumar Menon
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