Re: [xsl] XPath question

[Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Chris,

Doesn't your problem reduce to the first c node descendant?

/descendant::c[1]

?

Cheers,
Wendell

At 07:08 AM 6/7/2006, you wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I have a XPath problem that "should" be reasonably easy to solve, 
> but so far has just left me scratching my head.
>
> Given the following XML*
>
> <data>
>  <a>
>    <b/>
>  </a>
>  <a>
>    <b>
>      <c/>
>    <b/>
>  </a>
>  <a>
>    <b/>
>    <b>
>      <c/>
>    <b/>
>  </a>
> </data>
>
> * Note that this is just an example, the structure of the XML I'm 
> working with changes each time. Having said that, there are always 1 
> or more "a" nodes, "a" nodes contain "b" nodes and there are always 
> 1 or more "b" nodes, "b" nodes contain "c" nodes and a "c" node is 
> either present or not present.
>
> I am trying to create an XPath statement that selects the "c" node 
> child of the first "b" node child (that has a "c" node child) of the 
> first "a" node (that has a "b" node child, that in turn has a "c" 
> node child). If that makes any sense :)
>
> Note that I would just like to select 1 "c" node, as opposed to the 
> set of "c" nodes.
>
> I tried the following statement...
>
> /data/a[1]/b[1]/c
>
> ....and while (if it works) it only selects 1 node, it just selects 
> the first "a" node regardless of whether or not it contains a "b" 
> node (and regardless of whether or not that "b" node contains a "c" 
> node). In other words it only works if the first "a" node contains a 
> "b" and that "b" node contains a "c" node, otherwise it fails.
>
> I've tried so many variations on this statement that I've lost 
> count, but so far I haven't been able to get it do what it needs to.