XPath selection from path in XML content

Question

I have the following XML:

<root>
  <name>The name</name>
  <long>
    <path>
      <value>Some Value</value>
    </path>
  </long>
  <field>/root/name</field>
  <field>/root/long/path/value</field>
</root>

and I want to select these paths in the field tags however, when I try the following:

<xsl:value-of select="/root/field[1]" />

all I get is the text value of the field. Is there a way of selecting the correct node from those values?

Answer 1

You need some form of dynamic evaluation. I believe there is a non-standard function eval() (or evaluate() in some implementations) that allows you to use dynamic xpath.

Which XPath processor are you using, and XPath 1.0 or 2.0?

Answer 2

Such kind of dynamic evaluation is not supported even in XSLT 2.0.

Maybe the XSLT processor you are using supports EXSLT's dyn:evaluate() extension function?

Answer 3

If you want the node that contains "/root/node" then your xpath would be:

//*[.='/root/name']

this is called a predicate, where the* matches any node and the . is the current node.