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XPath: select child elements that do *not* have a specific name

Answer 1

+7 A:

/a/*[not(self::b)]

AakashM 2010-01-28 16:14:27

+1 for the nice usage of the `self` axis ;)

Lucero 2010-01-28 16:16:58

@Lucero: I owe @Tomalak for that idea :)

AakashM 2010-01-28 16:18:22

Thanks for the credit. :)

Tomalak 2010-01-28 16:21:01

When I run your XPath, I got only c,d,e nodes. But, node b is not included in it. How to get the node b also in the list excluding its children?

Sailaja 2010-01-28 16:57:49

@Sailaja : I think you should make your own separate question. When you do so, be sure to explain what you mean by getting node b but not its children - when xpath picks out a node, the node still *has* its children...

AakashM 2010-01-28 17:07:42

Answer 2

A:

Xpath will look:

a/*[name(.) !='b']

So, select children of 'a' whose name is not equal 'b'

Dewfy 2010-01-28 16:17:51

This breaks when namespaces and prefixes are being used.

Lucero 2010-01-28 22:24:50

@Lucero - according to source XML there is no namespace, but if so you have "local-name" function

Dewfy 2010-01-29 08:38:59

@Dewfy: yeah, and local-name() breaks also because it will match elements from any namespace instead of a specific element name. Since samples posted here are often simplified (quite obvious here) I'd not be so sure that no namespaces will be used, and even then if someone googles and comes across this answer they should be aware that your solution does not work with namespaces.

Lucero 2010-01-29 11:33:47

Answer 3

+1 A:

With XPath 2.0 you can even do

/a/(* except b)

Martin Honnen 2010-01-28 16:38:53

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XPath: select child elements that do not have a specific name

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