Eddy C wrote:

> I'm trying to strip an XML document of unwanted nodes such that in the
> example below I would keep all the parent nodes of a child node I
> wanted and for other parents which do not have the child requested they
> would be stripped.
> 
> I understand I could use XSLT but I'm doing this in java and was
> wondering if there was a preferred approach out there.
> 
> 
> Before
> <a>
>   <b>
>     <c>fdfdsf</c>
>   </b>
>   <b>
>     <x>dffsd</x>
>   </b>
>   <b>
>     <x>dffsd</x>
>     <c>fdfdsf</c>
>   </b>
> </a>
> 
> After requesting to keep child c
> <a>
>   <b>
>     <c>fdfdsf</c>
>   </b>
>   <b>
>     <c>fdfdsf</c>
>   </b>
> </a>

XSLT is easier to use for this, IMHO:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
                version="1.0">

  <xsl:output method="xml"/>

  <xsl:param name="keep"/>

  <xsl:template match="*">
    <!-- check current element, descendants, and siblings -->
    <xsl:variable name="matches">
      <xsl:for-each select=".|descendant::*|../*">
        <xsl:if test="name()=$keep">
          <xsl:text>Y</xsl:text>
        </xsl:if>
      </xsl:for-each>
    </xsl:variable>
    <xsl:if test="$matches!=''">
      <xsl:copy>
        <xsl:apply-templates/>
      </xsl:copy>
    </xsl:if>
  </xsl:template>
  
</xsl:stylesheet>

There's probably a more elegant way, but my brain stopped working an hour
ago.

///Peter