XPath expression to find elements whose tag name contains 'Name'

Question

I am a newcomer to XPath.

I am looking for a way to get all elements whose tag name contains a particular string.

For example, if I have XML like below, I want to get all the elements whose tag name contains the word 'Name'. i.e., I want to fetch the following elements: <SquareName>, <RectangleName>, and <ParallelogramName>.

I tried some combinations of name(), contains() etc., but it did not work. Please suggest.

<Objects>
 <Four-Sided>
   <Square>
      <SquareName>ABCD</SquareName>
      <Length>4</Length>
      <Height>4</Height>
      <Colour>Blue</Colour>
   </Square>
   <Rectangle>
      <RectangleName>EFGH</RectangleName>
      <Length>10</Length>
      <Height>6</Height>
      <Colour>Brown</Colour>
   </Rectangle>
   <Parallelogram>
      <ParallelogramName>WXYZ</ParallelogramName>
      <Length>12</Length>
      <Height>4</Height>
      <Colour>Black</Colour>
   </Parallelogram>
</Four-Sided>
</Objects>

score 41 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 18 '13 at 09:18

41

For an XPath solution:

//*[contains(local-name(), 'Name')]

answered Feb 18 '13 at 09:18

Jens Erat

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After looking at the result, I find that among the Elements that is returns, I need to avoid one element with tag name as 'PeriodName'. I can programatically do that but was wondering if XPath has a solution for that also ? – user2082317 Feb 18 '13 at 09:59
2

You could either use regular expressions or if it's only for this one, another predicate (or combine them using `or`): `//*[contains(local-name(), 'Name')][local-name() != 'PeriodName']` – Jens Erat Feb 18 '13 at 10:03

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Oct 26 '16 at 05:49

1

Since there is no Namespace prefix, you can also use

//*[contains(name(), 'Name')]

edited Oct 26 '16 at 05:49

Serjik

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answered Oct 19 '16 at 07:11

farooq

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Close to the solution. – mm759 Dec 30 '16 at 19:45

XPath expression to find elements whose tag name contains 'Name'

2 Answers2

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