How to get xpath from an XmlNode instance

Question

Could someone supply some code that would get the xpath of a System.Xml.XmlNode instance?

Thanks!

Answer 1

I produced VBA for Excel to do this for a work project. It outputs tuples of an Xpath and the associated text from an elemen or attribute. The purpose was to allow business analysts to identify and map some xml. Appreciate that this is a C# forum, but thought this may be of interest.

Sub Parse2(oSh As Long, inode As IXMLDOMNode, Optional iXstring As String = "", Optional indexes)


Dim chnode As IXMLDOMNode
Dim attr As IXMLDOMAttribute
Dim oXString As String
Dim chld As Long
Dim idx As Variant
Dim addindex As Boolean
chld = 0
idx = 0
addindex = False


'determine the node type:
Select Case inode.NodeType

    Case NODE_ELEMENT
        If inode.ParentNode.NodeType = NODE_DOCUMENT Then 'This gets the root node name but ignores all the namespace attributes
            oXString = iXstring & "//" & fp(inode.nodename)
        Else

            'Need to deal with indexing. Where an element has siblings with the same nodeName,it needs to be indexed using [index], e.g swapstreams or schedules

            For Each chnode In inode.ParentNode.ChildNodes
                If chnode.NodeType = NODE_ELEMENT And chnode.nodename = inode.nodename Then chld = chld + 1
            Next chnode

            If chld > 1 Then '//inode has siblings of the same nodeName, so needs to be indexed
                'Lookup the index from the indexes array
                idx = getIndex(inode.nodename, indexes)
                addindex = True
            Else
            End If

            'build the XString
            oXString = iXstring & "/" & fp(inode.nodename)
            If addindex Then oXString = oXString & "[" & idx & "]"

            'If type is element then check for attributes
            For Each attr In inode.Attributes
                'If the element has attributes then extract the data pair XString + Element.Name, @Attribute.Name=Attribute.Value
                Call oSheet(oSh, oXString & "/@" & attr.Name, attr.Value)
            Next attr

        End If

    Case NODE_TEXT
        'build the XString
        oXString = iXstring
        Call oSheet(oSh, oXString, inode.NodeValue)

    Case NODE_ATTRIBUTE
    'Do nothing
    Case NODE_CDATA_SECTION
    'Do nothing
    Case NODE_COMMENT
    'Do nothing
    Case NODE_DOCUMENT
    'Do nothing
    Case NODE_DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT
    'Do nothing
    Case NODE_DOCUMENT_TYPE
    'Do nothing
    Case NODE_ENTITY
    'Do nothing
    Case NODE_ENTITY_REFERENCE
    'Do nothing
    Case NODE_INVALID
    'do nothing
    Case NODE_NOTATION
    'do nothing
    Case NODE_PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION
    'do nothing
End Select

'Now call Parser2 on each of inode's children.
If inode.HasChildNodes Then
    For Each chnode In inode.ChildNodes
        Call Parse2(oSh, chnode, oXString, indexes)
    Next chnode
Set chnode = Nothing
Else
End If

End Sub

Manages the counting of elements using:

Function getIndex(tag As Variant, indexes) As Variant
'Function to get the latest index for an xml tag from the indexes array
'indexes array is passed from one parser function to the next up and down the tree

Dim i As Integer
Dim n As Integer

If IsArrayEmpty(indexes) Then
    ReDim indexes(1, 0)
    indexes(0, 0) = "Tag"
    indexes(1, 0) = "Index"
Else
End If
For i = 0 To UBound(indexes, 2)
    If indexes(0, i) = tag Then
        'tag found, increment and return the index then exit
        'also destroy all recorded tag names BELOW that level
        indexes(1, i) = indexes(1, i) + 1
        getIndex = indexes(1, i)
        ReDim Preserve indexes(1, i) 'should keep all tags up to i but remove all below it
        Exit Function
    Else
    End If
Next i

'tag not found so add the tag with index 1 at the end of the array
n = UBound(indexes, 2)
ReDim Preserve indexes(1, n + 1)
indexes(0, n + 1) = tag
indexes(1, n + 1) = 1
getIndex = 1

End Function