Re: [xml] results from xpath

["Christopher R. Maden" <crism maden org>]

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At 02:36 10/5/04, Nicolas ANTONIAZZI wrote:
> I'm using libxml for a project and I'm very impressed by the quantity of
> functionnality that it offers. But I have few questions about the XPath
> implementation.
>
> xml example :
>
> <a id="1">
>  <b id="2">
>   <c id="3">
>    <d id="6"/>
>   </c>
>  </b>
>  <b id="4">
>   <c id="5"/>
>  </b>
> </a>
>
> I would like to get the following xml portion :
>
> <b id="2">
>  <c id="3">
>  </c>
> </b>

The key distinction which I think you are missing is this: the B2 element 
is its start-tag, its end-tag, *and all its content*.

So you don't want the B2 node and the C3 node, but not the others; you want 
a completely new tree with many similarities.

Identifying the nodes that you want to mimic (I won't say "copy") is easy 
enough:

//b[ id='2'] | //c[ id='3']

or even

id('2') | id('3')

if you have the appropriate DTD or schema information available.  But now, 
you don't *copy* those nodes - you retrieve information from them and 
output it.  xmlElemDump(), as you've discovered, will give you the entire 
element - not just its start- and end-tags.  Instead, write new elements 
that share information from the old ones.  (Sorry for no example - I'm more 
familiar with the Perl XML::LibXML interface than the direct C API.)

~Chris
- -- 
Christopher R. Maden, Principal Consultant, crism consulting
XML-SGML-HTML-DTDs-schemas-XSL-DSSSL-conversion-training-ebooks-B2B
<URL: http://crism.maden.org/consulting/ >
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