Xpath for unique value

[milecimm]

Hi

I have the following xml structure

CONTRACTS
--CONTRACT
---SUPPLIERS
----SUPPLIER
-----SUPPLIERID
-----SUPPLIERNAME

I need to get all unique values for suppliers so I dont get the same supplier more than once. I'm using the following xpath but it's not working:

Xpath = CONTRACTS/CONTRACT/SUPPLIERS/SUPPLIER[not(SUPPLIERID=preceding-sibling::SUPPLIER/SUPPLIERID)]")

And how can I sort by SUPPLIERNAME?

Many thanks!

[jkmyoung]

Just use preceding instead. Xpath = CONTRACTS/CONTRACT/SUPPLIERS/SUPPLIER[not(SUPPLIERID=preceding::SUPPLIER/SUPPLIERID)]")

Are you using xsl? Perhaps:
<xsl:sort select="SUPPLIERNAME"/>

This assumes you don't have any other types of SUPPLIER nodes, and if you did you should be using namespaces anyways.

[milecimm]

This works, thank you very much.

I'm not using xsl. Is there another way?

Thanks again.

[jkmyoung]

What are you using? ......

[milecimm]

Hi, I managed to solve the problem with the sorting. This is my code:

My xml is -----> REVISED

CONTRACTS
--CONTRACT
---SUPPLIER
---COMMODITIES
----COMMODITY
-----COMODDITYNAME
 
 
        Dim xdoc As New XPathDocument("testxml.xml")
        Dim nav As XPathNavigator = xdoc.CreateNavigator()
        Dim expr As XPathExpression
 
 
        expr = nav.Compile("/pf:CONTRACTS/pf:CONTRACT[not(pf:SUPPLIER=preceding::pf:SUPPLIER)]/pf:SUPPLIER")
 
        Dim namespaceManager As XmlNamespaceManager = New XmlNamespaceManager(nav.NameTable)
        namespaceManager.AddNamespace("pf", "http://namespace.ac.uk")
        expr.AddSort(".", XmlSortOrder.Ascending, XmlCaseOrder.None, String.Empty, XmlDataType.Text)
        expr.SetContext(namespaceManager)
        Dim nodes As XPathNodeIterator = nav.Select(expr)
 
        If nodes.Count > 0 Then
 
            Dim tr As String = Nothing
 
            myString.AppendLine("<table width='300px' border='0' cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' border='0' class='datatable1'>")
            myString.AppendLine("<th>Supplier name</th>")
 
            While nodes.MoveNext()
 
                Dim supplier As XPathNavigator = nodes.Current.SelectSingleNode(".", namespaceManager)
 
                myString.AppendLine("<tr><td>" & supplier.ToString())
                myString.AppendLine("</td></tr>")
 
            End While
 
            myString.AppendLine("</table>")
 
            Dim strOutput As String = myString.ToString()
            lblOutput.Text = strOutput
 
 
        Else
 
            lblOutput.Text = "No results for your search"
 
        End If