Retrieve value and attribute name from xpath

Question

I have this block of xml.

    <procedure>
        <name1>first</name1>
        <name2>second</name2>
        <name3>third</name3>
    </procedure>

How can I retrieve the values (first, second, third - this I can do) and attributes (name1, name2, name3) as an XPath Expression?

Thank you

Please edit your question and show what exactly is your expected output. Also, what version of xpath can you use? — Jack Fleeting, Jul 14 '21 at 16:21

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 14 '21 at 16:11

To retrieve values 'first', 'second' and 'third' you can use below x-path.

//procedure/*

Also you can get each value separately.

//procedure/name1
//procedure/name2
//procedure/name3

name1, name2, name3 are the nodes and these are not attributes. You can use below x-path to get node name.

//procedure/*/name()

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 14 '21 at 16:02

Using python's module lxml:

import lxml.html

if __name__ == '__main__':
    text = """<procedure>
        <name1>first</name1>
        <name2>second</name2>
        <name3>third</name3>
    </procedure>"""

    root = lxml.html.fromstring(text)

    for item in root.xpath('./descendant::node()'):
        try:
            if item.strip():
                print(item)

        except AttributeError:
            print(item.tag)

Pay attention to the xpath expression used, as noted in this SO answer.

The code above prints:

name1
first
name2
second
name3
third

You just have to save it in a .py file and execute it with: python3 script.py.

I can't use python, only an XPath Expression, because I am using Opentext Appworks. Thank you, though. — Quick, Jul 14 '21 at 16:07

Retrieve value and attribute name from xpath

2 Answers2