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XML Xpath on selecting on multiple attributes

I have XML that can look like either of the ones shown below

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<root>
	<record>
		<field cost="220"/>
	</record>
</root>

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<root>
	<record>
		<field val="220"/>
	</record>
</root>

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I want to create and XPath to select either the 'cost' or the 'val' attribute.

Is there a better way than this ?

 /root/record/field/@val | /root/record/field/@cost

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Seems inefficient to me

graye

Uh, no... that's about it.

Why were you thinking it was inefficient?

Gertone (Geert Bormans)

If your XPath version would be 2.0 or higher,
I would definitely do this
/root/record/field/(@cost | @val)

In most contexts that would be more efficient

Using XPath 1.0,
I have a tendency to rewrite the XPath as follows
/root/record/field/@*[name() = 'cost' or name() = 'val']
but the string casting of the name is expensive,
so it really depends on the optimisations used inside your XPath processor
So the efficiency gain is unpredictable
(you could run some tests if you want to know for your processor)
The Xpath looks definitely nicer in my opinion, but that is a matter of taste

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Gertone (Geert Bormans)

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Molko

ASKER

Thanks

Gertone (Geert Bormans)

welcome