Re: Xpath 1.0 Question : Excluding Attributes?

Simon Shutter wrote:

Hi Abel,

Sorry for the confusion.  I meant only attribute nodes so I assume from your
examples that I have to put the entire path before each attribute of
interest.

Ie // tier1 / tier2 / @attrb1 | // tier1 / tier2 / @attrb2


Is there a way to exclude specific attributes in Xpath 1.0?

Well, like I said, usually the easiest way to do that is by using an identity transform (see my examples), but I haven't seen your code so I can't tell it's the right approach.

With any of your XPaths, however, this works for excluding attributes:

//tier1/tier2/@*[not(local-name() = 'exclude-me')]

and this with QNames:

//tier1/tier2/@*[not(name() = 'ns:exclude-me')]

//tier1/tier2/@*[not(local-name()='exclude-me' and
                     namespace-uri()='...insert URI here ....')]

//tier1/tier2/@*[not(local-name()='exclude-me' and
                     namespace-uri()=document('')/*/namespace::ns)]

//tier1/tier2/@*[not(../@ns:exclude-me and
                     count(.|../@ns:exclude-me)=1)]

Finally, you may have hoped this would work, like it does for normal axis:

//tier1/tier2/@*[not(self::exclude-me)]

but then you try to test for the self::node() being an 'exclude-me' element node, but self::node() is not an element, it is an attribute (the reason is, technically speaking, that the principal node kind of self:: is the element node, and you can't switch that). Unfortunately, XPath does not have a way to express a self::node() axis when the axis is the attribute axis. I.e., this won't work (illegal):

//tier1/tier2/@*[not(self::@exclude-me)]

XPath 2.0 has a workaround for this (also note the way of using parenthesis, which is not legal for XPath 1.0, but in this case saves a lot of re-typing the parent path):

//tier1/tier2/(@* except @exclude-me)

HTH,
-- Abel Braaksma
  http://www.nuntia.nl

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