How to find element by attribute value in GPath?

Question

What is an alternative to this XPath //div[@id='foo'] in GPath? In general, where I can find this documentation?

Ichnite

Answer 1

Here is the corresponding snippet:

def node = new XmlSlurper().parseText(...)
def foo = node.depthFirst().findAll { it.name() == 'div' && it.@id == 'foo'}

A few other links you may want to read:

• GPath documentation
• Processing XML with Groovy

Nonsuch

It's Groovy, not GPath. I need a single GPath expression. – Ichnite

Not too sure what you mean, since GPath is mostly using groovy syntax with the following extra symbols: ".." that returns the parent "" that returns all the children "*" that act as a depth first loop "@" that is used to access a property the normal node accessor. – Nonsuch

Answer 2

The previous poster gave you all that's required: Assuming your document has been slurped into xml, you want

def foo = xml.path.to.div.find{it.@id == 'foo'}

to find a single result. Or findAll to find all results.

Labial

// in XPath means that I don't know the exact path to div – Ichnite

ok. then the previous poster gave you the solution: - use xml.depthFirst().find{it.name() == 'div' && id.@id == 'foo} – Labial

@Labial What's the expression for getting all elements with a specific attribute name? – Optimum

xml.'**'.findAll { it.@attributeName } – Phalanx

Answer 3

To mimic the expression //div[@id='foo'] the closest thing you can do with a GPath is:

def xml = new XmlParser().parseText(text)
xml.'**'.div.findAll { it.@id=="foo" }

the '**' is pretty much the same as '//' in your XPath.

xml.'**'.div

will yield all the nodes of type div at any level.

Later filtering with findAll() with the given closure you get a list of nodes as you do in the XPath case

Datura

Answer 4

what you need is this:

def root = new XmlSlurper().parseText(<locOfXmlFileYouAreParsing>.toURL().text)

def foundNode = root.'**'.find{ it.@id == "foo" }

its the double * that will let you find it without knowing the path. At least this is how I do it.

Musk

How do you find the first instance of a node by element name, assuming there's more than one? – Optimum

xml.'**'.find { it.name() == 'elementName' } And that will be the first one. – Phalanx