xpath, count elements error: "Result is a NodeSet containing 1 element"
xml, xpath
Solution
Your XPath query should probably be:
count(/game/info/players/screenname)
The XPath you are using now is asking for all `game/info/players` nodes which have a non-zero number of `screenname/text()` descendent nodes. Since there's only one `players` element, the resulting nodeset contains only one element.
Remember, an XPath is a series of axis-nodetest-predicate expressions (`axis::nodetest[predicate]`) separated by steps (`/`). Only axis-nodetest is part of the result set sent to the next step--the predicate never appears in a result set because it is only used to filter.
Problem
I started to learn xpath at w3cschool. I am trying to evaluate the number of players in the game. (so counting the screenname and the text() elements/attributes) Here is my example xml: ``` <game> <info> <name>My Game</name> <description>A <i>very</i> interesting game.</description> <started>2012-03-01T18:00:00Z</started> <players number="2"> <screenname player="1">Alice</screenname> <screenname player="2">Bob</screenname> </players> <rounds>2</rounds> <winner player="2"/> </info> </game> ``` the xpath query I use is: ``` //game/info/players[count(.//screenname/text())] ``` But I only get: ``` "Result is a NodeSet containing 1 element" ``` (tool: http://www.whitebeam.org/library/guide/TechNotes/xpathtestbed.rhtm) What causes this error?