Could someone give me a code example of this that does work. I tried:

DECLARE @xml xml;

DECLARE @expression nvarchar(128);

SET @xml =

'<books>

<book price=''31'' name=''SQL Server Central'' Author=''Steve Jones''/>

</books>';

--SET @expression = '/books/book/@price[text()=31]';

IF @xml.exist('/books/book/@price[text()=31]') =1

SELECT

T.value('./@price[1]','int'),

T.value('./@name[1]','nvarchar(32)'),

T.value('./@Author[1]','nvarchar(32)')

FROM @xml.nodes('/books/book') AS T(T);

and I get the error:

XQuery [exist()]: Result of 'text()' expression is statically 'empty'

So I replace the XPath expression with:

/books/book/@price=31

and it works.

I don't use Xml and XPath every day, but I understand most of the basic concepts. What should the Xml look like in order to use the original XPath expression? The '@price' means an attribute and 'text()' all the text within a node. To me, the XPath expression is invalid or just doesn't make sense.

P.S.

Did the author just do the same thing I did and forget to escape out the '<' with '& lt;' in the Xml string when writing and posting the question?

P.P.S

I can't get an escaped ampersand followed by 'lt;', as in above to show up in these forums without manually putting that space between them.