XPath to join all resulting nodes with string separator

Question

I want to join the values of all the nodes that match an expression and have them separated by a comma. For example, the following xml should return "num1,num2,num3"

<products>
  <product>
    <id>1</id>
    <other>y</other>
    <notarget>x</notarget>
    <target>num1</target>
    <target>num2</target>
    <target>num3</target>
  </product>
</products>

The XPath /*[name()='products']/*[name()='product']/*[name()='target'] should get the elements, but I just don't understand how to join them.

If you're using xpath 2.0, you could use string-join() - for your input string-join(//target,',') results in num1,num2,num3 — matthias_h
– matthias_h, Commented Jan 19, 2015 at 0:31
I may be wrong, but I think in xpath 1.0 it's only possible if you know the number of elements and then use concat(), see e.g. stackoverflow.com/questions/17373041/… — matthias_h
– matthias_h, Commented Jan 19, 2015 at 0:51
possible duplicate of XPath to return string concatenation of qualifying child node values or Return text from several elements in one string using xPath — kjhughes
– kjhughes, Commented Jan 19, 2015 at 1:45
@kjhughes based on those answers, would the path be /*[name()='products']/*[name()='product']/*[name()='target']/text() and then concatenate on my own? I'm asking because it doesn't seem to be providing all the nodes — user1136342
– user1136342, Commented Jan 19, 2015 at 2:19

Michael Kay · Accepted Answer · 2015-01-19 09:06:00Z

2

It can't be done in pure XPath 1.0 without some help from the host language. In fact it's difficult even with help from the host language, because XPath 1.0 has no concept of a "sequence of strings".

answered Jan 19, 2015 at 9:06

Michael Kay

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Phi Long Trịnh · Accepted Answer · 2020-09-16 09:39:26Z

1

<xsl:value-of select="[set of nodes]" separator="."/>

I wanted to do the same thing and solved it with the separator attribute using XSLT 2.0

answered Sep 16, 2020 at 9:39

Phi Long Trịnh

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Rudolf Yurgenson · Accepted Answer · 2015-01-19 09:03:09Z

0

<xsl:for-each select="/products/product/target">
  <xsl:if test="position() != 1">,</xsl:if><xsl:value-of select="text()"/>
</xsl:for-each>

You can place it inside variable if you want to reuse it later:

<xsl:variable name="concat">
  <xsl:for-each select="products/product/target">
    <xsl:if test="position() != 1">,</xsl:if><xsl:value-of select="text()"/>
  </xsl:for-each>
</xsl:variable>

<xsl:value-of select="$concat"/>

answered Jan 19, 2015 at 9:03

Rudolf Yurgenson

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2 Comments

Ian Roberts Over a year ago

This would be a great answer if the question were about xslt rather than xpath...

Rudolf Yurgenson Over a year ago

My fault. If it's a saxon or xalan then it's rather easy to write external funtion that will return concatenated strings.

Gilles Quénot · Accepted Answer · 2015-01-19 09:10:20Z

0

With saxon-lint :

saxon-lint --output-separator , --xpath '//target/text()' file

OUTPUT

num1,num2,num3

answered Jan 19, 2015 at 9:10

Gilles Quénot

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roblogic · Accepted Answer · 2018-04-18 00:21:02Z

0

Use concat with your delimiter (per https://stackoverflow.com/a/25766054/148889)

concat(//SomeElement/text(),'_',//OtherElement/text())

answered Apr 18, 2018 at 0:21

roblogic

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