XQuery delete if node has not child nodes

Question

I would like to delete the "node2" nodes that have not child nodes. how can I do that

<node1>
    <node2>
        <node3>4</node3>
    </node2>
    <node2></node2>
    <node2></node2>
</node1>

How can I do that with xquery>

Answer 1

If you want to modify a database, use XQuery Update:

delete nodes //node2

For inline XML snippets or when you want to modify the result output (and no database on disk), you can use a modify/transform statement:

copy $c :=
  <node1>
    <node2>
      <node3>4</node3>
    </node2>
    <node2></node2>
    <node2></node2>
  </node1>
modify (
  delete nodes $c//node2
)
return $c