XPath with multiple conditions

Question

What XPath can I use to select any category with a name attribute specified and any child node author with the value specified.

I've tried different variations of the path below with no success:

//quotes/category[@name='Sport' and author="James Small"]

The XML:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<quotes>
  <category name="Sport">
   <author>James Small<quote date="09/02/1985">Quote One</quote><quote             date="11/02/1925">Quote nine</quote></author>
  </category>
   <category name="Music">
   <author>Stephen Swann
 <quote date="04/08/1972">Quote eleven</quote></author>
  </category>
  </quotes>

Answer 1

Use:

/category[@name='Sport' and author/text()[1]='James Small']

or use:

/category[@name='Sport' and author[starts-with(.,'James Small')]]

It is a good rule to try to avoid using the // pseudo-operator whenever possible, because its evaluation can typically be very slow.

Also:

./somename

is equivalent to:

somename

so it is recommended to use the latter.

Answer 2

question is not clear, but what i understand you need to select a catagory that has name attribute and should have child author with value specified , correct me if i am worng

here is a xpath

//category[@name='Required value'][./author[contains(.,'Required value')]]
e.g
//category[@name='Sport'][./author[contains(.,'James Small')]]

Answer 3

Try:
//category[@name='Sport' and ./author/text()='James Small']