Re: [xsl] XPath iteration?

[Derek Davies <ddavies at itasoftware dot com>]

Jeni Tennison <jeni@jenitennison.com> writes:

> Hi Derek,
> 
> > I'm sorry if this question is inappropriate here, but I haven't
> > found a more appropriate place to ask, nor have I found a FAQ that
> > addresses my question.
> 
> Don't worry; this is a good place to ask your question.
> 
> > I'm trying to come up with an XPath expression that will "iterate".
> > What I have in mind is something to the effect of:
> >
> >       /Root/SomeNode[position()!=position(/Root/SomeNode)]
> >
> > which would compare each SomeNode against all other SomeNode's
> > except itself (there are multiple SomeNode children of /Root).
> 
> Given that all the SomeNode elements are siblings of each other, you
> can collect together the other SomeNodes into a node set with:
> 
>   preceding-sibling::SomeNode | following-sibling::SomeNode
> 
> I don't know what you want to do with them, though -- perhaps you
> could describe what you actually want to get from the XPath?
> 

We've got a program that is used to test our XML output by using XPath
to assert things about the output.  I have a situation where I want to
use an XPath expression to ensure that no two sibling elements have
the same content.  But I don't want to rely on the number of these
siblings being constant across tests.

So in my example the number of SomeNode's can change over time but
the test shouldn't have to adapt to that.  It should just ensure that
the SomeNode contents are different.

Derek

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