XQuery: Deleting Empty Nodes From XML Document

• Riccardo10

  Old Hand

  Points: 322

  More actions

  February 28, 2014 at 5:18 am

  #104231

  Hi peops,

  I am new to XQuery and have a problem. I want to delete a child element (in this case called 'step') if and only if it is empty i.e. <step/>. So if there are 3 step elements and the last 2 are empty, then only these 2 elements should be deleted. In effect, the position of this child element is irrelevant. But at moment, I can only delete either all step elements or specified ones. I want to be able to delete the step child element regardless of it's ordinal position. Help any one...please? :unsure:

  Below is the sample document and code.

  declare @xdata as xml = '

  <root>

  <location locationid="10">

  <step>Alpha</step>

  <step />

  <step>Beta</step>

  </location>

  <location locationid="20">

  <step />

  <step />

  <step>Gamma</step>

  </location>

  <location locationid="30">

  <step />

  <step>prime</step>

  </location>

  </root>

  '

  [p]set @xdata.modify('delete //step[fn:empty(.) = xs:boolean("true")]')[/p]

  Many Thanks.

• Arthur Olcot

  SSCertifiable

  Points: 6736

  More actions

  February 28, 2014 at 10:02 am

  #1693172

  Hi.. I would use something like the following. This is checking to see if the text node is empty or not in the predicate.:

  set @xdata.modify('delete //step[empty(text())]')

• Riccardo10

  Old Hand

  Points: 322

  More actions

  February 28, 2014 at 10:21 am

  #1693186

  Many thanks arthurolcot, it worked! I appreciate your effort.

  Nice one and have a lovely weekend!

  Best Regards.