Extract value of attribute node via XPath

Solution 1:

//Parent[@id='1']/Children/child/@name 

Your original child[@name] means an element child which has an attribute name. You want child/@name.

Solution 2:

To get just the value (without attribute names), use string():

string(//Parent[@id='1']/Children/child/@name)

The fn:string() fucntion will return the value of its argument as xs:string. In case its argument is an attribute, it will therefore return the attribute's value as xs:string.

Solution 3:

You should use //Parent[@id='1']/Children/child/data(@name)

The attributes can not be serialized so you can't return them in an xml looking result. What you need to do is obtain the data from the attribute using data() function.

Solution 4:

As answered above:

//Parent[@id='1']/Children/child/@name 

will only output the name attribute of the 4 child nodes belonging to the Parent specified by its predicate [@id=1]. You'll then need to change the predicate to [@id=2] to get the set of child nodes for the next Parent.

However, if you ignore the Parent node altogether and use:

//child/@name

you can select name attribute of all child nodes in one go.

name="Child_2"
name="Child_4"
name="Child_1"
name="Child_3"
name="Child_1"
name="Child_2"
name="Child_4"
name="Child_3"