Getting the XPath from a Node

Question

Hey Folks, have a scenario where i need to link my data, i.e one node points to another node, e.g
<data>
<liability id="1">
<value> 10000 </value>
</liability>
<asset id = "2">
<value> 20000 </value>
</asset>
</data>
so take the case above, i have a house which is an asset and i have a mortgage(liability) on that house, now i want to show that in my asset that there is a liability on this asset, so i need to come up with a way to link my asset to a liability, now easiest way in my thinking is just point to the XPath of the liability!! Now problem is this, at the data level that im working at, i know what data node im working on but i dont know its absolute path, in my case the above XML is just a snippet of what im dealing with, there is more hierarchical levels in my document!! Maybe im blind but i couldnt see from the API how to get the XPath of a node?? is there existing API which does this or will i have to go ahead and write something to come up with the XPath!! or does anyone have any other suggestions as to how i would do my link??
The way i see my XML when finished is something like this
<data>
<liability id="1">
<value> 10000 </value>
</liability>
<asset id = "2">
<value> 20000 </value>
<liability> /data/liability[@id='1'] </liability>
</asset>
</data>
any thoughts are welcome,
cheers,
LL

Answer 1

A better design would be to make your "id" attribute the key... looking back at your post, it seems that you have done that already. So your XML should just look something like this:<data>
<liability id="1">
<value> 10000 </value>
</liability>
<asset id = "2" liabilityid="1">
<value> 20000 </value>
</asset>
</data>Then when your code needs to match the liability to the asset, you can easily build the XPath to find it. (Of course if there can be more than one liability per asset, you shouldn't use a liabilityid attribute as I did in the example.)
PC&#178;