Re: [xsl] XPath for selecting all text node children?

[Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ilkka:

The most recent preceding component, not including the component your 
context node is in, is

preceding::component[1]

All text node children of it are

preceding::component[1]/text()

but it sounds like you want

preceding::component[1]//text()

which is short for

preceding::component[position() = 1]/descendent-or-self::node()/child::text()

and includes "all text in the preceding component (no matter how the text 
nodes are nested)".

Keep in mind, however, that if you ask for the value of that set of text 
nodes, you'll get the value only of the first one (since the value of a 
node set is the value of the set's first node in document order). If you 
want a string that contains all the text node content of the preceding 
component, concatenated together, just ask for the value of that node 
itself (since the value of a node is the concatenation of the values of its 
text node descendents).

So try preceding::component[1]

I hope that helps,
Wendell

At 01:54 PM 8/24/01, you wrote:
> Hi!
>
> I've a problem I've been struggling with all day, I have the following XML:
>
> <root>
>     <component>
>         <element>
>             <element>...text here...</element>
>         </element>
>     </component>
> </root>
>
> Now, in xslt, I'd like to get a string from the preceding component (yes,
> there are many of them), including all (no matter how the text nodes are
> nested) text in the preceding component. I'm doing this inside a for-each
> loop. What is the XPath expression for preceding "component"'s all text node
> children? Is this even possible?
>
> Regards,
> Ilkka Hartikainen


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