Xquery with multiple value element

Question

example i have xml data like this

<a>
   <book id="bk1">
         <test>Yeah</test>
   </book>
   <book id="bk2">
         <test>Hellow</test>
   </book>
   <book id="bk3">
         <test>yaya</test>
         <test>love</test>
         <test>hello</test>
   </book>
 </a>

my question is using xquery to select the book id where test element doesn't contain any value="love"

expected output:

<book id="bk1"/>
<book id="bk2"/>

but my output is like :

<book id="bk1"/>
<book id="bk2"/>
<book id="bk3"/>

following code:

for $b in /a
let $i := $b/book/test
let $id := $b/book/@id
where $i != "love"
return <book id="@id"/>

i suspect it's go to looping for bk3 and found another test value which is not love and return it. how to solve it?

This is no well-formed XML, the <book/> elements must be closed. Is this really the input you're given? — Jens Erat
Never retype code or input, always copy it. Makes it much too easy to introduce minor mistakes that lead to long ping-pong debugging in comments. — Jens Erat

Jens Erat Jens Erat · Accepted Answer · 2014-06-08T13:45:03

You code is returning a single, empty element for me. Instead of looping over the "container" <a/> node, loop over the books and filter as needed.

for $book in /a/book
where not($book/test = "love")
return <book>{ $book/@id }</book>

A second problem was with the @id attribute: To access the variable during cunstruction, you have to put curly brackets around it and access the variable, not some attribute without giving a context: <book id="{ $id }"/>. I used a slightly different way of constructing the element by including the attribute from the original element instead of reconstructing it.

Edit: Bonus one liner for XQuery 3.0 capable systems:

/a/book[not($book/test = "love")]/element book { ./@id }

Xquery with multiple value element

1 Answers