Xpath/XSLT : check if following sibling is a particular node

Question

I have seen questions where following-sibling has been applied based on a node's value but my issue is related to the actual node itself.

This is the type of XML I have have:

<Employee>
    <Summary>
        <A>
        <B>
    </Summary>
    <Elections>
    </Elections>
<Employee>

I need to write a Xpath condition as follows:

if (NOT(the following sibling(first sibling) of /Employee/Summary is Elections)), then do something.

Currently I have:

<xsl:if test="(not(following-sibling::Employee/Summary[1]='Earnings'))
    <xsl:call-template name="EmployeeRecord"/>
</xsl:if>

Please note that I am not checking a node value but the node itself(i.e the node name). Any help in the right direction will be much appreciated.

Answer 1

You are on the right track. The following-sibling axis evaluates from the context node in the previous step.

• if you are looking for the first element that is the following-sibling of /Employee/Summary, you would use: /Employee/Summary/following-sibling::*[1].

• In order to evaluate whether that first following-sibling is an Elections element, you can use an additional predicate filter [self::Elections].

• Testing for the negation of that, wrap the whole thing in not()

Putting it all together, adjusting your example:

<xsl:if test="not(/Employee/Summary/following-sibling::*[1][self::Elections])">
    <xsl:call-template name="EmployeeRecord"/>
</xsl:if>

Answer 2

I need to write a Xpath condition as follows:

if (NOT(the following sibling(first sibling) of /Employee/Summary is Elections)), then do something.

Use:

not(/Employee/Summary/following-sibling::*[1][self::Elections])

The XPath expression that is specified as argument to the not() function selects any Elections element that is the first following-sibling element of any Summary element that is a child of the top element Employee.

If this doesn't select any node, then the XPath expression above evaluates to true().