How to write a xpath to match all elements except a particular element

Question

I am writing an XSL transformation. I want to write a template which matches all the child elements of the document except one particular node. My xml looks like this -

<Document>     <NodeA></NodeA>      <NodeB></NodeB>      <ServiceNode></ServiceNode>      <NodeX></NodeX> </Document> 

I want to write a template that matches all nodes except ServiceNode i.e. NodeA to NodeX. How to write this Xpath to get -

<xsl:template match="ALL Nodex Except ServiceNode"> 

Answer 1

I want to write a template that matches all nodes except ServiceNode i.e. NodeA to NodeX.

If by "node" you mean element, then use:

<xsl:template match="*[not(self::ServiceNode)]"> 

If by "node" you mean any node (of type element, text, comment, processing-instruction): use

<xsl:template match="node()[not(self::ServiceNode)]"> 

If you want only children of Document to be matched use:

<xsl:template match="Document/node()[not(self::ServiceNode)]"> 

If you want only children of the top element to be matched use:

<xsl:template match="/*/node()[not(self::ServiceNode)]"> 

Answer 2

You should better use this expression:

*[not(self::ServiceNode)] 

As incorporated in an XSLT:

<xsl:stylesheet     version="1.0"     xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">     <xsl:output method="text"/>      <xsl:template match="/*">         <xsl:apply-templates select="*[not(self::ServiceNode)]"/>     </xsl:template>      <xsl:template match="*">         <xsl:value-of select="."/>         <xsl:text>&#xA;</xsl:text>     </xsl:template>  </xsl:stylesheet> 

With this XML sample:

<Document>     <NodeA>1</NodeA>     <NodeB>2</NodeB>     <ServiceNode>3</ServiceNode>     <NodeX>4</NodeX> </Document> 

It will give a correct result:

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