• Chapter 1: Getting Started with Stylus Studio
• Chapter 2: Editing and Querying XML
• Chapter 3: Converting Non-XML Files to XML
• Chapter 4: Working with XSLT
• Chapter 5: Creating XSLT Using the XSLT Mapper
• Chapter 6: Debugging Stylesheets
• Chapter 7: Defining XML Schemas
• Chapter 8: Defining Document Type Definitions
• Chapter 9: Writing XPath Expressions
  • About the XPath Processor
  • Sample Data for Examples and Testing
  • Getting Started with Queries
  • Specifying the Nodes to Evaluate
  • Handling Strings and Text
  • Specifying Boolean Expressions and Functions
  • Specifying Number Operations and Functions
  • Comparing Values
  • Finding a Particular Node
  • Obtaining a Union
  • Obtaining Information About a Node or a Node Set
  • Using XPath Expressions in Stylesheets
  • Accessing Other Documents During Query Execution
  • XPath Quick Reference
• Chapter 10: Working with XQuery in Stylus Studio
• Chapter 11: Composing Web Service Calls
• Chapter 12: Accessing Relational Data as XML
• Chapter 13: Extending Stylus Studio
• Chapter 14: Stylus Studio Reference

Home > Online Product Documentation > Table of Contents > Obtaining All Elements of a Particular Name

Obtaining All Elements of a Particular Name

Sometimes you want all like-named elements regardless of where they are in a document. In this case, you do not need to start at the root node and navigate to the elements you want.

For example, the following query returns all last-name elements in any XML document:

//last-name
       

    

The double forward slash (//) at the beginning of a query instructs the XPath processor to start at the root node and search the entire document. In other words, the XPath processor searches all descendants of the root node.

If you perform this query on bookstore.xml, it returns the last-name elements that are children of author elements, and it also returns the last-name element that is a child of a publication element.