Question

Select all descendant nodes with text node values

Asked by: trudyhlittle

I am trying to get a count of all descendant nodes for the current node that have text node values.  For example, given the following xml, I would expect the value 1.
 <FORM>
        <FORM_VALUE1>afc</FORM_VALUE1>
         <ACTION/>
        <FORM_NAME/>
        <FORM_ITEM_NAME1/>
        <FORM_IDENTIFIER/>
        <NTRID/>
    </FORM>

For the following xml, I would expect 0.

<FORM>
        <FORM_VALUE1/>
         <ACTION/>
        <FORM_NAME/>
        <FORM_ITEM_NAME1/>
        <FORM_IDENTIFIER/>
        <NTRID/>
    </FORM>

I have tried a variety of different, solutions but I either always get back 0, or 7.
<xsl:element name="counter">
<xsl:value-of select="count($parentGroup/descendant[string-length(node())>0])"/>
</xsl:element>

Thanks.

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Asked On
2009-08-18 at 08:20:42ID24661714
Tags

XSLT

,

XML

Topics

Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation (XSLT)

,

XPath

Participating Experts
2
Points
250
Comments
8

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Answers

 

by: locke_aPosted on 2009-08-18 at 12:43:47ID: 25126801

Try:

count(FORM/node()[string-length() > 0])

 

by: trudyhlittlePosted on 2009-08-18 at 13:28:20ID: 25127316

That didn't work either.   It returns 8 for the first senario and 7 for the second senario.

 

by: locke_aPosted on 2009-08-18 at 13:39:19ID: 25127424

Can you tell me how you're executing that XPath?  In my testing I am seeing one for the first, zero for the second and two for the following:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<FORM>
	<FORM_VALUE1>afc</FORM_VALUE1>
	<ACTION/>
	<FORM_NAME>asdf</FORM_NAME>
	<FORM_ITEM_NAME1/>
	<FORM_IDENTIFIER/>
	<NTRID/>
</FORM>

                                              
1:
2:
3:
4:
5:
6:
7:
8:
9:

Select allOpen in new window

 

by: locke_aPosted on 2009-08-18 at 13:43:35ID: 25127474

I used the following simple XSLT against the XML I posted in http:#25127424 and get back two.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="2.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:fn="http://www.w3.org/2005/xpath-functions">
	<xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes"/>
	<xsl:template match="/">
		<xsl:element name="counter">
			<xsl:value-of select="count(FORM/node()[string-length() > 0])"/>
		</xsl:element>
	</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

                                              
1:
2:
3:
4:
5:
6:
7:
8:
9:

Select allOpen in new window

 

by: GertonePosted on 2009-08-18 at 14:33:34ID: 25127903

@locke_a,
I bet you are testing either in XML Spy or with a microsft XML parser,
but your solution is also counting white-space only text nodes.
Both XML Spy and msxml do this the wrong way,
they forget to count white-space only text nodes which both processors ,
since both processors erroneously consider those as non significant
Since you made it an XSLT2 stylesheet I bet you are using XML-Spy
Beware for Spy's XSLT2, it is not standardized enough, as you have just proven yourself
If I use your stylesheet with a conformant processor such as Saxon, I get <counter>7</counter> which is wrong

@trudyhlittle,
You ask for nodes, but I think you mean elements, not text nodes
I suggest that you should use "descendant::*" instead of "descendant::node()"
When checking whether something is empty, it is always good to normalize-space before,
just in order to avoid a single space or a single new line to be counted as a significant node

I believe this is the XPath you want

count(FORM/node()[string-length(normalize-space(.)) > 0])

or in case of elements only

count(FORM/*[string-length(normalize-space(.)) > 0])

translated to your example

<xsl:value-of select="count($parentGroup/descendant::*[string-length(normalize-space(.)) > 0])"/>

cheers

Geert

 

by: locke_aPosted on 2009-08-18 at 19:53:22ID: 25129324

Good call Gert, I am in fact using XML Spy (configured to use the Microsoft parser).

Right on both counts, I'll have to keep an eye out for this in the future.

Thanks!

 

by: trudyhlittlePosted on 2009-08-19 at 07:39:54ID: 25133200

Gertone:
Thanks.  Adding the normalize-space function did the trick.  

 

by: GertonePosted on 2009-08-19 at 07:40:50ID: 25133214

welcome

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