RE: [xml-dev] How to retrieve both Elements & Attributes at the sametime

["Michael Kay" <mike@saxonica.com>]

Use (i), and then navigate from the elements to the required attributes either using JDOM methods such as getAttribute() or using another XPath expression (such as "@id").

 

You can select the id and password attributes in a single expression using the union operator, but (a) there's no guarantee whether the id's or the password's will come first (it might even be different for different elements), and (b) with XPath 1.0, as your example (iv) shows, there's not even a guarantee that the results will be in document order - XPath 1.0 returns a node-set, not a node-sequence.

 

Michael Kay

http://www.saxonica.com/

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From: Jack Bush [mailto:netbeansfan@yahoo.com.au]
Sent: 18 October 2008 14:15
To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Subject: [xml-dev] How to retrieve both Elements & Attributes at the sametime in XPath

Hi XML Experts,

 

I would like to find out how to retrieve both the content of element and attribute of nodes at the same time using XPath in Java.. Below is an example of an XML structure:

 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1" ?>

<organisation>

<employee>

<personal id="10000" password="abc123">John Smith</personal>

<personal id="20000" password="def123">Adam Jones</personal>

<personal id="30000" password="ghi123">Jade Brown</personal>

<personal id="40000" password="jkl123">Larry Dolton</personal>

<personal id="50000" password="mno123">Rodney White</personal>

<personal id="60000" password="pqr123">George Green</personal>

.....

</employee>

</organization>

 

Some of the XPath statements attempted are as follows:

 

( i ) java.util.List employeePersonalDetail = XPath.selectNodes(EmployeeXMLDocument, "/organization/employee/personal");

Iterator iterator = employeePersonalDetail.iterator();

while (iterator.hasNext())

System.out.println(((org.jdom.Element)iterator.next()).getTextNormalize());

 

Output

John Smith

Adam Jones

Jade Brown

Larry Dolton

Rodney White

George Green

 

( ii ) java.util.List employeePersonalDetail = XPath.selectNodes(EmployeeXMLDocument, "/organization/employee/personal/@id*")

Iterator iterator = employeePersonalDetail.iterator();

while (iterator.hasNext())

System.out.println(((org.jdom.Attribute)iterator.next()).getValue);

 

Output

10000

20000

30000

40000

50000

60000

 

( iii ) java.util.List employeePersonalDetail = XPath.selectNodes(EmployeeXMLDocument, "/organization/employee/personal/@password*")

Iterator iterator = employeePersonalDetail.iterator();

while (iterator.hasNext())

System.out.println(((org.jdom.Attribute)iterator.next()).getValue);

 

Output

abc123

def123

ghi123

jkl123

mno123

pqr123

 

( iv ) java.util.List employeePersonalDetail = XPath.selectNodes(EmployeeXMLDocument, "/organization/employee/personal/@id* | /organization/employee/personal/@password")

Iterator iterator = employeePersonalDetail.iterator();

while (iterator.hasNext())

System.out.println(((org.jdom.Attribute)iterator.next()).getValue);

 

Output

10000

20000

30000

40000

50000

60000

abc123

def123

ghi123

jkl123

mno123

pqr123

 

However, I would like to get the following output instead:

10000

abc123

20000

def123

30000

ghi123

40000

jkl123

50000

mno123

60000

pqr123

 

( v ) java.util.List employeePersonalDetail = XPath.selectNodes(EmployeeXMLDocument, "/organization/employee/personal | /organization/employee/personal/@id*");

Iterator iterator = employeePersonalDetail.iterator();

while (iterator.hasNext()) {

System.out.println(((org.jdom.Element)area_iterator.next()).getTextNormalize());

System.out.println(((org.jdom.Attribute)area_iterator.next()).getValue());

}

 

Output

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ClassCastException: org.jdom.Element cannot be cast to org.jdom.Attribute.

I would like to get the following output though:

John Smith

10000

Adam Jones

20000

Jade Brown

30000

Larry Dolton

40000

Rodney White

50000

George Green

60000

 

I would like to stay away from having to use transformation as much as possible due to lack of knowledge in that area.

 

I would very much appreciated if you could help with achieving XPath searches ( iv ) and ( v ).

 

Many thanks,

Jack

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