XPath to get all child nodes (elements, comments, and text) without parent

Question

I need an XPath to fetch all ChildNodes ( including Text Element, Comment Element & Child Elements ) without Parent Element. Any help

Sample Example:

<DOC> <PRESENTEDIN>     <X>         First Text Node #1          <y> Y can Have Child Nodes #              <child> deep to it </child>           </y>          Second Text Node #2 <z/>      </X>     <EVTS>         <evt/>         <evt>             <mtg_descr> SAE 2006 World Congress &amp; Exhibition </mtg_descr>             <sess_descr> Advanced Hybrid Vehicle Powertrains (Part 1 of 5) </sess_descr>             <loc> Detroit,MI,United States </loc>             <sess_prod_grp_cd> TSESS </sess_prod_grp_cd>             <sess_evt_name> P13 </sess_evt_name>             <sess_gen_num> 138352 </sess_gen_num>             <mtg_start_dt> 04/03/2006 </mtg_start_dt>             <mtg_end_dt> 04/06/2006 </mtg_end_dt>             <desig> CONGRESS-2006 </desig>         </evt>     </EVTS>     <EVTTYPE>PAPER</EVTTYPE>     <SUPERTECH>         <![CDATA[C8585]]>     </SUPERTECH> </PRESENTEDIN> 

XPATH TRIED

   1. $doc/PRESENTEDIN/X    2. $doc/PRESENTEDIN/X/descendant::*    2. $doc/PRESENTEDIN/X/self::* 

EXPECTED OUTPUT

    First Text Node #1      <y> Y can Have Child Nodes #          <child> deep to it </child>       </y>      Second Text Node #2 <z/>  

I DON'T WANT

<X>   First Text Node #1          <y> Y can Have Child Nodes #              <child> deep to it </child>           </y>          Second Text Node #2 <z/>  </X> 

Answer 1

From the documentation of XPath ( http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath/#location-paths ):

child::* selects all element children of the context node

child::text() selects all text node children of the context node

child::node() selects all the children of the context node, whatever their node type

So I guess your answer is:

$doc/PRESENTEDIN/X/child::node() 

And if you want a flatten array of all nested nodes:

$doc/PRESENTEDIN/X/descendant::node() 

Answer 2

Use this XPath expression:

/*/*/X/node() 

This selects any node (element, text node, comment or processing instruction) that is a child of any X element that is a grand-child of the top element of the XML document.

To verify what is selected, here is this XSLT transformation that outputs exactly the selected nodes:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"  xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">  <xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes"/>  <xsl:template match="/">   <xsl:copy-of select="/*/*/X/node()"/>  </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet> 

and it produces exactly the wanted, correct result:

   First Text Node #1                 <y> Y can Have Child Nodes #                         <child> deep to it </child>     </y>            Second Text Node #2      <z /> 

Explanation:

1. As defined in the W3 XPath 1.0 Spec, "child::node() selects all the children of the context node, whatever their node type." This means that any element, text-node, comment-node and processing-instruction node children are selected by this node-test.

2. node() is an abbreviation of child::node() (because child:: is the primary axis and is used when no axis is explicitly specified).