Combine “starts-with” a node with “contains” a value PHP xpath search - PHP

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Combine “starts-with” a node with “contains” a value PHP xpath search

simplexml xpath add tag

David (imported from SE)

I have a PHP xpath query that works well for searching on a single node of my XML file. In simplified form, it looks like this:

    $url = 'myfile.xml';
    $xml = simplexml_load_file($url);
    $xml->registerXPathNamespace("h", "https://library.example.ac.uk");
    
    $found = $xml->xpath("//h:row[h:AUTHOR1[contains(.,'$search')]]");
    ...

The limitation is that it only finds AUTHOR1, but this XML library catalog file can contain multiple authors, like this sample entry:

```xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<table xmlns="https://library.example.ac.uk">
  <row>
    <AUTHOR1>FABER, Adele</AUTHOR1>
    <AUTHOR2>MAZLISH, Elaine</AUTHOR2>
    <AUTHOR3></AUTHOR3>
    <AUTHOR4></AUTHOR4>
    <CALLNO>306.875 FAB</CALLNO>
    <COPIES>1</COPIES>
    <COPYNO>1.</COPYNO>
    <CUSTOM1>2011</CUSTOM1>
    <CUSTOM2></CUSTOM2>
    <EDITION></EDITION>
    <IBARCODE>856490.</IBARCODE>
    <ISBN>0380705273</ISBN>
    <PLACEPUBL>New York</PLACEPUBL>
    <PUBLISHER>Norton</PUBLISHER>
    <SUBJECT1>Child rearing</SUBJECT1>
    <SUBJECT2>Sibling rivalry</SUBJECT2>
    <SUBJECT3>Psychology</SUBJECT3>
    <SUBJECT4></SUBJECT4>
    <SUBJECT5></SUBJECT5>
    <TITLE>Siblings without rivalry : how to help your children live together so you can live too</TITLE>
    <WEBSITE/>
    <WORDCOUNT>0</WORDCOUNT>
  </row>
</table>
```

My current search will only find "FABER", but I would like it also to be able to find "MAZLISH".

I thought this would be a job for `starts-with`, but no syntax I have tried will work. I thought I could do something like:

    $xml->xpath("//h:row[h:[starts-with(name(), 'AUTHOR')[contains(...

But I cannot get any variant of that to work. (The problem is not the nesting of quotes or brackets, I'm quite sure.) And I have tried both `name` and `local-name` for the `starts-with` bit.

So! How to find hits on any of the `AUTHOR1`, `AUTHOR2`, `AUTHORn`... nodes?

Top Answer

Nigel Ren (imported from SE)

The problem is more with how you select the nodes, `name()` will give you the name including the prefix, so you don't need to specify this as a separate part of the query (I think as it's the default prefix it is blank).  So the value will be `AUTHOR1` etc.  So change the way that you select the author nodes to just use `/*[starts-with(name(), 'AUTHOR')]`...

    $found = $xml->xpath("//h:row[*[starts-with(name(), 'AUTHOR')][contains(.,'$search')]]");
    
You can always add `/..` to the end of the XPath to backtrack to the row element:  
`//h:row/*[starts-with(name(), 'AUTHOR')][contains(.,'$search')]/..`

1 Answer