XPATH to check if a given node is present or not

To check if a node is present in a XML or not simply use boolean function

So for the XML

<person id="1"> <name>John Smith</name> <phone_home>12345</phone_home> <phone_office></phone_office> </person>

If we want to know if phone_home is present or not then simply say

boolean(/person/phone_office)

Similarly if you want to check if any phone is present or not

boolean(/person/*[contains(name(.),"phone")])

and in the same way it can be extended to more complex queries, like if any phone is empty

boolean(/person/*[contains(name(.),"phone") and .=""])

or if any or the nodes are empty:

boolean(/person/*[.=""])


Same approach can be applied based on node content.

So for XML

<jobs> <job seq="1">Job 1 Completed with status success</job> <job seq="2">Job 2 Completed with status success</job> <job seq="3">Job 3 Completed with status failure</job> <job seq="4">Job 4 Completed with status success</job> </jobs>

If we need to know if any of the jobs failed:

boolean(/jobs/job[contains(.,"status failure")])

Also, the same approach can be used based on attribute name

So for XML

<details> <detail name="John Smith"/> <detail phone_home="12345"/> <detail phone_office="54321"/> </details>

If we need to know if any of the attribute has phone in attribute name then:

boolean(/details/detail[contains(name(./@*), "phone")])

And same as with node names we can check if any of phone is empty:

boolean(/details/detail[contains(name(./@*), "phone") and ./@* = ""])

or if any of the attribute is empty

boolean(/details/detail[./@* = ""])

Hope this helps