Getting element names using XPath/XQuery

Question

having the following XML sample document, I need to issue an XPath/XQuery expression to get the element names for every children of a CD element.

<CD>
  <TITLE>Empire Burlesque</TITLE>
  <ARTIST>Bob Dylan</ARTIST>
  <COUNTRY>USA</COUNTRY>
  <COMPANY>Columbia</COMPANY>
  <PRICE>10.90</PRICE>
  <YEAR>1985</YEAR>
</CD>

So I need the query to return TITLE, ARTIST, COUNTRY, COUNTRY, PRICE, YEAR , any one can help please? thanks

Your terminology doesn't match your sample. ``, etc are child elements of `<cd>`, not attributes.</cd> — MattH, Jun 20 '12 at 13:56

score 19 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 20 '12 at 15:09

19

/CD/*/name()

(padded out because StackOverflow doesn't like short answers)

answered Jun 20 '12 at 15:09

Michael Kay

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what if we wanted to return CD? just name()? ./name() returns blank...trying to get the root node's name – tenwest May 08 '15 at 02:34
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name(/*) - the outermost element is not the "root node" in the XPath data model; it has a parent which is called the root node in XPath 1.0, or the document node in XPath 2.0. – Michael Kay May 08 '15 at 15:11
javax.xml.transform.TransformerException: Unknown nodetype: name .. it is not working .. – ChanGan Jun 17 '20 at 09:10
The expression requires XPath 2.0+ or XQuery 1.0+, it won't work in XPath 1.0. – Michael Kay Jun 17 '20 at 20:01

score -1 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 14 '16 at 18:21

-1

Try /\*/name()
e.g. for Oracle use

XMLCast(XMLQuery('/*/name()' PASSING db_some_field_name RETURNING CONTENT) AS VARCHAR2(4000))

edited Apr 14 '16 at 18:21

sudo bangbang

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answered Apr 14 '16 at 17:29

Bozhkov Alex

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Getting element names using XPath/XQuery

2 Answers2

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