Logo Questions Linux Laravel Mysql Ubuntu Git Menu
 

What is the correct XPath for choosing attributes that contain "foo"?

Tags:

xml

xpath

People also ask

What is the meaning of '/' in XPath?

Single Slash “/” – Single slash is used to create Xpath with absolute path i.e. the xpath would be created to start selection from the document node/start node.

What is the * indicates in XPath?

Then you'd select all element nodes with an @id -attribute-value equal to 'Passwd' in the whole document. Just add //* in the XPath -- it highlights --- various page elements. This would select all element nodes in the whole document.


//a[contains(@prop,'Foo')]

Works if I use this XML to get results back.

<bla>
 <a prop="Foo1">a</a>
 <a prop="Foo2">b</a>
 <a prop="3Foo">c</a>
 <a prop="Bar">a</a>
</bla>

Edit: Another thing to note is that while the XPath above will return the correct answer for that particular xml, if you want to guarantee you only get the "a" elements in element "bla", you should as others have mentioned also use

/bla/a[contains(@prop,'Foo')]

This will search you all "a" elements in your entire xml document, regardless of being nested in a "blah" element

//a[contains(@prop,'Foo')]  

I added this for the sake of thoroughness and in the spirit of stackoverflow. :)


This XPath will give you all nodes that have attributes containing 'Foo' regardless of node name or attribute name:

//attribute::*[contains(., 'Foo')]/..

Of course, if you're more interested in the contents of the attribute themselves, and not necessarily their parent node, just drop the /..

//attribute::*[contains(., 'Foo')]

descendant-or-self::*[contains(@prop,'Foo')]

Or:

/bla/a[contains(@prop,'Foo')]

Or:

/bla/a[position() <= 3]

Dissected:

descendant-or-self::

The Axis - search through every node underneath and the node itself. It is often better to say this than //. I have encountered some implementations where // means anywhere (decendant or self of the root node). The other use the default axis.

* or /bla/a

The Tag - a wildcard match, and /bla/a is an absolute path.

[contains(@prop,'Foo')] or [position() <= 3]

The condition within [ ]. @prop is shorthand for attribute::prop, as attribute is another search axis. Alternatively you can select the first 3 by using the position() function.


John C is the closest, but XPath is case sensitive, so the correct XPath would be:

/bla/a[contains(@prop, 'Foo')]

If you also need to match the content of the link itself, use text():

//a[contains(@href,"/some_link")][text()="Click here"]


Have you tried something like:

//a[contains(@prop, "Foo")]

I've never used the contains function before but suspect that it should work as advertised...


/bla/a[contains(@prop, "foo")]