How to retrieve value of attribute using xPath ?

Question

Hello experts,
I have a following xml chunk
<image file="/articles/engineering/boxerengine/preview_282x160.jpg">
<tout name="copyright"></tout>
<tout name="license"></tout>
<tout name="photographer"></tout>
<tout name="description"></tout>
</image>
I want to retrieve value of attribute file from absolute node image.
I tried using xpath='/image/@file' It gives output as file="/articles/engineering/boxerengine/preview_282x160.jpg"
I just want value "/articles/engineering/boxerengine/preview_282x160.jpg"
I tried using xpath='/image/@file/text()' . It does not work
Following is the java code. I am using XOM parser.
java code :
Builder parser = new Builder();
Document doc = parser.build(xmlFile);
Nodes titles = doc.query(xPath);
//xpath = ''/image/@file/text()"     
for (int i = 0; i < titles.size(); i++) {
strChunk = strChunk.append(titles.get(i).toXML());     
return strChunk.toString();
Please help.
Thanks,
Sandeep Parmar

Answer 1

Hi Sandeep,
Using XPath and XPathExpression you can evaluate XPath queries on Document. have a look at code given bellow:
// Building Document from XML File
org.w3c.dom.Document imageDoc = builder.parse(xmlFile);
// getting new instance of XPath
javax.xml.xpath.XPath xpath = javax.xml.xpath.XPathFactory.newInstance().newXPath();
// Building XPathExpression by compiling XPath query
javax.xml.xpath.XPathExpression xPathExp = xpath.compile("/image/@file");
// Evaluting XPath Expression on Document
String imagePath = (String) xPathExp.evaluate(imageDoc, javax.xml.xpath.XPathConstants.STRING);
// Priting image path it will print : "/articles/engineering/boxerengine/preview_282x160.jpg", if you try with data given in your post.
System.out.println(imagePath); Hope this will help.
thanks,
Tejas Purohit