XPath get attribute value xml

Question

I am using XPath in unix to get the value of attribute as follows:

xpath PM.xml '/*[contains(local-name(),'PM')]/*[contains(local-name(),'family')]/@eventNumber'

which is returning me:

Found 4 nodes:
-- NODE --
 eventNumber="000000"-- NODE --
 eventNumber="010000"-- NODE --
 eventNumber="020000"-- NODE --
 eventNumber="030000"

But here I need the value as:

000000
010000
020000
030000

After looking into some examples, I tried functions like string(), text() as follows, but didn't work.

SS-03:~/pankaj # xpath PM.xml '/*[contains(local-name(),'PM')]/*[contains(local-name(),'family')]/@eventNumber/text()'
No nodes found
SS-03:~/pankaj # xpath PM.xml '/*[contains(local-name(),'PM')]/*[contains(local-name(),'family')]/@eventNumber/string()'
Parse of expression /*[contains(local-name(),PM)]/*[contains(local-name(),family)]/@eventNumber/string() failed - junk after end of expression: ( at /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.10.0/XML/XPath/Parser.pm line 127.

Please correct me where I am wrong. Also, please help me to get this using xpath only, as I have to use this in XSL.

Answer 1

Your xpath is fine, that's only the way the application you used display xpath result. For example, the same xpath when used in XSL like so :

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
    <!-- set output method to be plain text -->
    <xsl:output method="text"/>

    <xsl:template match="/">
      <!-- using exactly the same xpath -->
      <xsl:apply-templates select="/*[contains(local-name(),'PM')]/*[contains(local-name(),'family')]/@eventNumber"/>
    </xsl:template>

    <xsl:template match="@*">
        <!-- print attribute value -->
        <xsl:value-of select="."/>
        <!-- print newline character -->
        <xsl:text>&#xa;</xsl:text>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

given the following input XML :

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<PM xmlns="foo">
  <family eventNumber="000000"/>
  <family eventNumber="010000"/>
  <family eventNumber="020000"/>
  <family eventNumber="030000"/>
</PM>

yield the expected values in output :

000000
010000
020000
030000

Answer 2

With xpath 2.0 you can get the value of attribute with function string() at the end of your expression

...   /@eventNumber/string()

but never in xpath 1. Only by post processing or, if you waiting one result,

string( ...   /@eventNumber )