Use Xpath to find the appropriate element based on the element value

Question

I have the following xml snippet

        <ZMARA01 SEGMENT="1">
            <CHARACTERISTICS_01>X,001,COLOR_ATTRIBUTE_FR,BRUN ÉCORCE,TMBR,French C</CHARACTERISTICS_01>
            <CHARACTERISTICS_02>X,001,COLOR_ATTRIBUTE,Timber Brown,TMBR,Color Attr</CHARACTERISTICS_02>
        </ZMARA01>

I am looking for an xpath expression that will match based on COLOR_ATTRIBUTE. It will not always be in CHARACTERISTIC_02. It could be CHARACTERISTIC_XX. Also I don't want to match COLOR_ATTRIBUTE_FR. I have been using this:

Transaction.Input_XML{/ZMAT/IDOC/E1MARAM/ZMARA01/*[starts-with(local-name(.), 'CHARACTERISTIC_')][contains(.,'COLOR_ATTRIBUTE')]}

This gets me mostly there but it matches both COLOR_ATTRIBUTE and COLOR_ATTRIBUTE_FR

Answer 1

If COLOR_ATTRIBUTE is guaranteed not to be in the first or last position, you could use [contains(.,',COLOR_ATTRIBUTE,')], otherwise you could use something like [contains(.,'COLOR_ATTRIBUTE') and not contains(.,'COLOR_ATTRIBUTE_FR')].

Answer 2

Use:

contains(concat(',', ., ','), ',COLOR_ATTRIBUTE,')

This first surrounds the string value of the context node with commas, then simply tests if the so cunstructed string contains ',COLOR_ATTRIBUTE,'.

Thus we treat all cases (pattern at the start of the string, pattern at the end of the string and pattern neither at the start or at the end) in the same single way.