xmlstarlet XPath expression selects single result rather than multiple

Question

I have an XML file having structure like this:

Answer 1

if you are not bound to xmlstarlet try to use xmllint otherwise adjustment of the xpath like shown below could help.

$ xmllint --xpath '//role//sid/../../@name' roles.xml
 name="Employees" name="Others"

The xml file for this example looked like

  
    
      
        
          abc
          bcd
        
      
      
        
          abc
          zxc
        
      
    
  

In short you can address parent childs attribute by addressing them with ../@*.