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xmlxpath

Getting attribute using XPath

Given an XML structure like so:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>

<bookstore>

<book>
  <title lang="eng">Harry Potter</title>
  <price>29.99</price>
</book>

<book>
  <title lang="eng">Learning XML</title>
  <price>39.95</price>
</book>

</bookstore>

How could I get the value of lang (where lang is eng in book title), for the first element?

Solution

  • How could I get the value of lang (where lang=eng in book title), for the first element?

    Use:

    /*/book[1]/title/@lang

    This means:

    Select the lang attribute of the title element that is a child of the first book child of the top element of the XML document.

    To get just the string value of this attribute use the standard XPath function string():

    string(/*/book[1]/title/@lang)