XSL / XPath expression to check if a node contains at least one non-empty child

Question

I need to check if an XML node has at least one non-empty child. Applied to this XML the expression should return true

Answer 1

Here's one XPath that should accomplish the job:

count(/*/node/*[text()]) > 0

When used in a sample XSLT:

...which is, in turn, applied to the provided example XML:

  
    
    
    value
  

...the expected result is produced:

true

If we apply the same XSLT against a simply modified XML:

...again, the expected result is produced:

false

Explanation:

The XPath used searches for all children of a element (which are, in turn, children of the root element) that have a non-empty text value (as specified by text()); should the count of such children be greater than 0, then the XPath resolves to true.