On: XML is almost always misused

[robofanatic]

I guess the correct answer depends upon the requirement.

I like this way

  <root>
   <item key="name">John</item>
   <item key="city">London</item>
  </root>

So I can use this xpath to get the person's name:

  //root/item[@key="name"]/text()

Not sure what would be the xpath to get the name if the XML was

  <root>
   <item>
    <key>Name</key>
    <value>John</value>
   </item>
   <item>
    <key>City</key>
    <value>London</value>
   </item>
  </root>

This is a better example:

  <employees>
   <employee id="1">
     <field name="name">John</field>
     <field name="city">London</field>
   </employee>
   <employee id="2">
     <field name="name">Jack</field>
     <field name="city">Boston</field>
   </employee>
  <employees>

[commandlinefan → robofanatic]

Well, actually, an even better example is:

    <employees>
      <employee id="1">
        <name>John</name>
        <city>London</city>
      </employee>
      <employee id="1">
        <name>Jack</name>
        <city>Boston</city>
      </employee>

I know what you’re trying to do there - you’re trying to “future-proof” your schema by allowing introduction of arbitrary new elements. Which means that there’s no standard way to guard against somebody omitting a required field (like “name”) or adding a new field like “creditCardNumber” - other than to document your acceptable key values in a non-standard format and add defensive code that a validating parser would have given you. You’re better off taking as much advantage of the format as you can.

[scandox → robofanatic]

If you accept the author's premise then all of these (including his) are wrong uses of XML.

[elFarto → robofanatic]

The XPath for the second one would be:

//root/item/key[text()="Name"]/../value/text()

[icebraining → elFarto]

Alternatively

  //root/item[key[text()="Name"]]/value/text()

[benibela → icebraining]

You usually do not need to use text() in xpath, so this should work the same:

  //root/item[key="name"]/value