XPath: Select parent node based on multiple child criteria

Question

This is a complicated XPath problem I cannot figure out.

Suppose I have an XML Feed that contains many <event> nodes that look like this:

<bestlinesports_line_feed>
    <event>
    <event_datetimeGMT>2015-07-29 19:10</event_datetimeGMT>
        <sporttype>Baseball</sporttype>
        <scheduletext>null</scheduletext>
        <league>MLB Baseball</league>
        <participant>
            <participant_name>Washington Nationals</participant_name>
            <rotnum>905</rotnum>
            <visiting_home_draw>Visiting</visiting_home_draw>
            <odds>
                <moneyline>-124</moneyline>
            </odds>
            <pitcher>D. Fister -R</pitcher>
        </participant>
        <participant>
            <participant_name>Miami Marlins</participant_name>
            <rotnum>906</rotnum>
            <visiting_home_draw>Home</visiting_home_draw>
            <odds>
                <moneyline>114</moneyline>
            </odds>
            <pitcher>T. Koehler -R</pitcher>
            </participant>
            <drawrotnum>0</drawrotnum>
            <drawmoneyline>0</drawmoneyline>
            <drawTitle/>
        <period>
            <period_description>Game</period_description>
            <periodcutoff_datetimeGMT>2015-07-29 19:20</periodcutoff_datetimeGMT>
            <period_status>O</period_status>
            <spread>
                <spread_visiting>-1.5</spread_visiting>
                <spread_adjust_visiting>125</spread_adjust_visiting>
                <spread_home>1.5</spread_home>
                <spread_adjust_home>-145</spread_adjust_home>
            </spread>
            <total>
                <total_points>7.5</total_points>
                <over_adjust>-102</over_adjust>
                <under_adjust>-118</under_adjust>
            </total>
        </period>
    </event>

Now, there are 6 of these Washington Nationals event nodes. I'd like to target this specific one based on 4 criteria:

<participant_name> contains 'Nationals' (this narrows it down to 6) (this needs to be contains because they connect with my Rails model that == 'Nationals')
<event_datetimeGMT> contains '2015-07-29' (this narrows it down to 5) (needs to be contains as well because of my Rails game_date model)
<league> is 'MLB Baseball' (narrows it down to 2)
<period_description> is 'Game' (narrows it down to the 1)

This would be a HUGE help. XPath is really hard!

If you're feeling especially gracious, the 3 strings/values I am going to target once I have the parent event node selected are: <moneyline> under the home team, the second participant or Miami Marlins (there are two moneylines), then <total_points> and <spread_home>. This xml is a little wonky so it makes it harder.

Thank you so very much.

har07 · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-30 01:46:41Z

2

You can try this way (formatted for readability) :

//event
[
    participant/participant_name[contains(.,'Nationals')]
]
[
    event_datetimeGMT[contains(.,'2015-07-29')]
]
[
    league='MLB Baseball'
]
[
    period/period_description='Game'
]

Each of the outer predicate ([....]), in order, implements each of the four criteria mentioned in the question.

And the following are 3 XPath expressions for getting the 3 string values you want, given the targeted <event> as context node :

./participant[visiting_home_draw='Home']/odds/moneyline
./period/total/total_points
./period/spread/spread_home

edited Jul 30, 2015 at 1:46

answered Jul 30, 2015 at 1:21

har07

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