XSL Pattern-Matching Methods

To apply a method to a particular context, append to the context term (the element or attribute name) the exclamation point character, !, followed by the method name.

The XSL pattern-matching syntax supports methods that can be categorized in two general groups: Information Methods and Collection Methods. The information methods provide information about particular nodes, such as the node type, node name, its text, or other information. The collection methods return collections of all nodes of a particular type, such as all comment nodes, all processing instruction nodes, and all element nodes.

Method names are case sensitive. For example, the text method returns the text contained within a node, without any structure. (That is, it is the concatenation of all text nodes contained within an element and its descendants.)

Examples

Find all author elements with the text value "Bob":

author[text() = "Bob"]

Find all author elements containing a first-name child whose text is "Bob":

author[first-name!text() = "Bob"]

Find all author elements containing any child element whose text is "Bob":

author[*!text() = "Bob"]

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