I'm trying to write a query to pull all the specific fields from a xml
file. The XML is structured in such a way that nested child elements
in a section will determine if a field exists in a form. In order to
show all the fields in an xml file I need to get all XML elements
between two elements.

Here is an example:

<root>
<container>
<elem><tag="start" /></elem>
<elem><val>Keep this one</val></elem>
<elem><tag="stop" /></elem>
<elem><val>Discard Me</val></elem>
<elem><tag="start" /></elem>
<elem><val>Keep this one</val></elem>
<elem><tag="stop" /></elem>
</container>
</root>

I want to get the <val> tags between the start and stop tags, and
discard the <val> tags outside of the start/stop tags.
Anyone know how to write an XPath query to give me this? I've been
frustrated over it for a while now using Visual XPath to figure it
out.

Thanks,
Brendan

Brendan CM wrote:

What is that? That is not well-formed XML.

Same here.




--

Martin Honnen --- MVP XML
http://JavaScript.FAQTs.com/

Ok, figured it out, given the following XML:
<root>
<container>
<elem><tag v="start"></tag></elem>
<elem><val>Keep this one</val></elem>
<elem><val>Keep this one too</val></elem>
<elem><tag v="stop"></tag></elem>
<elem><val>Discard Me</val></elem>
<elem><tag v="start"></tag></elem>
<elem><val>Keep this one</val></elem>
<elem><tag v="stop"></tag></elem>
</container>
</root>

This XPath will return only elems within the start stop tags:
//val[preceding::elem[./tag/@v][1]/tag/@v='start']

On Nov 8, 5:31 am, Martin Honnen <mahotr... (AT) yahoo (DOT) de> wrote:

<root>
<container>
<elem><tag v="start"></tag></elem>
<elem><val>Keep this one</val></elem>
<elem><tag v="stop"></tag></elem>
<elem><val>Discard Me</val></elem>
<elem><tag v="start"></tag></elem>
<elem><val>Keep this one</val></elem>
<elem><tag v="stop"></tag></elem>
</container>
</root>

Same question applies though, surely someone here knows that last
little bit of XPath that I'm missing.
This is what I've got so far: //elem[tag[@v="start"]]/following-
sibling::*[following-sibling::*/tag[@v="stop"]]
And it doesn't work.