Xpath/XSLT : check if following sibling is a particular node

Question

I have seen questions where following-sibling has been applied based on a node's value but my issue is related to the actual node itself.

This is the type of XML I have have:

<Employee>
    <Summary>
        <A>
        <B>
    </Summary>
    <Elections>
    </Elections>
<Employee>

I need to write a Xpath condition as follows:

if (NOT(the following sibling(first sibling) of /Employee/Summary is Elections)), then do something.

Currently I have:

<xsl:if test="(not(following-sibling::Employee/Summary[1]='Earnings'))
    <xsl:call-template name="EmployeeRecord"/>
</xsl:if>

Please note that I am not checking a node value but the node itself(i.e the node name). Any help in the right direction will be much appreciated.

Solution 1

You are on the right track. The following-sibling axis evaluates from the context node in the previous step.

• if you are looking for the first element that is the following-sibling of /Employee/Summary, you would use: /Employee/Summary/following-sibling::*[1].

• In order to evaluate whether that first following-sibling is an Elections element, you can use an additional predicate filter [self::Elections].

• Testing for the negation of that, wrap the whole thing in not()

Putting it all together, adjusting your example:

<xsl:if test="not(/Employee/Summary/following-sibling::*[1][self::Elections])">
    <xsl:call-template name="EmployeeRecord"/>
</xsl:if>

Solution 2

I need to write a Xpath condition as follows:

if (NOT(the following sibling(first sibling) of /Employee/Summary is Elections)), then do something.

Use:

not(/Employee/Summary/following-sibling::*[1][self::Elections])

The XPath expression that is specified as argument to the not() function selects any Elections element that is the first following-sibling element of any Summary element that is a child of the top element Employee.

If this doesn't select any node, then the XPath expression above evaluates to true().

Comments

[forty-two]

What is the current node? The outlined condition doesn't at all fit with with your current xslt. Can you state in words where you are in the document and what you want to achieve?

[BurnsBA]

I hadn't seen the self part before, so for others like me, with a namespace (ns) it is: [self::ns:Elections]