Use of name() function in XPath

In the previous section of XPath in Java tutorial we have studied about how to use count() function in XPath query and in our this section we are going to see how we can implement name() 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 name() function in our XPathName class to retrieve name of different nodes according to queries:

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 XPathName 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 "//*[name()='BBB']" will select all elements with name BBB, equivalent with //BBB, "//*[starts-with(name(),'B')]" will select all elements name of which starts with letter B and "//*[contains(name(),'C')]" will select all elements name of which contain letter C.
Here is the full example code of XPathName.java as follows:


import org.w3c.dom.*;

import javax.xml.xpath.*;

import javax.xml.parsers.*;

import java.io.IOException;

import org.xml.sax.SAXException;



public class XPathName {



  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("//*[name()='BBB']");

  //Select all elements with name BBB, equivalent with //BBB

 System.out

   .println("Select all elements with " 
	+

  "name BBB, equivalent with //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 all elements name "+

  "of which starts with letter B");

  expr = xpath.compile("//*[starts-with(name(),'B')]");

   //Select all elements name of which starts with letter B

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

  nodes = (NodeList) result;

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

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

  }

  System.out

  .println("Select all elements "+

   "name of which contain letter C");

  expr = xpath.compile("//*[contains(name(),'C')]");

   //Select all elements name of which contain letter C

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

  nodes = (NodeList) result;

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

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

  }  

  }

}

Follow these steps to run this example :

create xmlData.xml
create and save XPathName.java
compile and execute XPathName class

Output:

Download Source Code

Use of name() function in XPath