Comments on: XMLSearch in ColdFusion – Unusual Behavior

By: Gareth

Gareth — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:59:56 +0000

Glad to hear it helped you out. It’s nice to know that someone else didn’t have to pummel away at their code trying to make it work

By: Tony Nelson

Tony Nelson — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:31:58 +0000

I just stumbled upon this same issue today and was pleased to find such a simple solution. Thanks for the (unknowing) help.

By: Ben Nadel

Ben Nadel — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 21:41:32 +0000

Essentially there are three types of ways to find something based on the start of the search path:

“/” -> Starting at the root document. As in:
/rootnode/subnode

“//” -> Anywhere in the document. As in:
//subnode

“./” -> (same as not putting any slash at all) Starting at the current context node.

By: Gareth

Gareth — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 20:16:29 +0000

@Ben,
Ah, I had another go (now I’ve got the official Ben Nadel Approved Code ) and it looks like it’s because I have another node in there.

./properties/property[ @identity='true' ]

found it.

Is there a way to say “find it anywhere in my subdocument” rather than having to specify all nodes on the way to the node?

By: Ben Nadel

Ben Nadel — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 19:55:43 +0000

@Gareth,

You made one minor mistake that is causing the headache. Yes, the search results are references to elements STILL in the primary document tree. As such, you have to be careful about how you start you subsequent searches. If you use this:

//property[ @identity= 'true']

… the “//” means “anywhere in the document.” Well, since the search results are still *part* of the original document, the “//” will search as if you are searching of the main document.

To stay *within* the subset of the search results, I use this:

./property[ @identity= 'true']

… the “./” means “starting at this node” perform the search. You could also just forget the slash altogether:

property[ @identity= 'true']

… this should be the same thing (like folder paths).