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Use of count() function in XPath
Posted on: September 29, 2008 at 12:00 AM

In the previous section of XPath in Java tutorial we have studied about how to run XPath query in java and in this section we are going to see how we can implement count() function in the XPath query.

Use of count() function in XPath

In the previous section of XPath in Java tutorial we have studied about how to run XPath query in java and in this section we are going to see how we can implement count() function in the XPath query.

First of all we have created an XML file xmlData.xml. This xml file contains various nodes and we have used count() function in our XPathCount class to count different nodes with their specific values.

Here is the full example code of xmlData.xml as follows:

xmlData.xml


<?xml version="1.0" ?>

<AAA>

  <CCC>

  <BBB/>

  <BBB/>

  <BBB/>

  </CCC>

  <DDD>

  <BBB/>

  <BBB/>

  </DDD>

  <EEE>

 <BCC/>

 <BDD/>

  </EEE>

</AAA>

Now we have declared a class XPathCount and in this class we are parsing the XML file with JAXP. First of all we need to load the document into DOM Document object. We have put that xmlData.xml file in that current working directory.

 
      DocumentBuilderFactory domFactory = 

        DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();

        domFactory.setNamespaceAware(true); 

        DocumentBuilder builder = domFactory.newDocumentBuilder();

        Document doc = builder.parse("xmlData.xml");

Above lines of code parses "xmlData.xml" file and creates a Document object. Next we have created XPath object with the use of XPathFactory.

XPath xpath = XPathFactory.newInstance().newXPath();

Expression "//*[count(BBB)=2]" will select elements which have two children BBB and "//*[count(*)=3]" will select elements which have 3 children. Here is the full example code of XPathCount.java as follows:

XPathCount.java


import org.w3c.dom.*;

import javax.xml.xpath.*;

import javax.xml.parsers.*;

import java.io.IOException;

import org.xml.sax.SAXException;



public class XPathCount {



  public static void main(String[] args) 

 throws ParserConfigurationException, SAXException, 

  IOException, XPathExpressionException {



  DocumentBuilderFactory domFactory = 

  DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();

  domFactory.setNamespaceAware(true); 

  DocumentBuilder builder = domFactory.newDocumentBuilder();

  Document doc = builder.parse("xmlData.xml");

  XPath xpath = XPathFactory.newInstance().newXPath();

  XPathExpression expr = xpath.compile("//*[count(BBB)=2]");

  //Select elements which have two children BBB

 System.out.println("Select elements which have two children BBB");

  Object result = expr.evaluate(doc, XPathConstants.NODESET);

  NodeList nodes = (NodeList) result;

  for (int i = 0; i < nodes.getLength(); i++) {

 System.out.println(nodes.item(i).getNodeName()); 

  }

  System.out.println("Select elements which have 3 children");

  expr = xpath.compile("//*[count(*)=3]");

   //Select elements which have 3 children

  result = expr.evaluate(doc, XPathConstants.NODESET);

  nodes = (NodeList) result;

  for (int i = 0; i < nodes.getLength(); i++) {

 System.out.println(nodes.item(i).getNodeName()); 

  }

  }

}

To run this example follow these steps as follows:

Create xmlData.xml file
create and save XPathCount.java
compile and execute XPathCount class.

Output:

Download Source Code

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