In the second example XML file the elements are bound to a namespace. Your XPath is attempting to address elements that are bound to the default “no namespace” namespace, so they don’t match.
The preferred method is to register the namespace with a namespace-prefix. It makes your XPath much easier to develop, read, and maintain.
However, it is not mandatory that you register the namespace and use the namespace-prefix in your XPath.
You can formulate an XPath expression that uses a generic match for an element and a predicate filter that restricts the match for the desired local-name()
and the namespace-uri()
. For example:
/*[local-name()='workbook'
and namespace-uri()='http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/spreadsheetml/2006/main']
/*[local-name()='sheets'
and namespace-uri()='http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/spreadsheetml/2006/main']
/*[local-name()='sheet'
and namespace-uri()='http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/spreadsheetml/2006/main'][1]
As you can see, it produces an extremely long and verbose XPath statement that is very difficult to read (and maintain).
You could also just match on the local-name()
of the element and ignore the namespace. For example:
/*[local-name()='workbook']/*[local-name()='sheets']/*[local-name()='sheet'][1]
However, you run the risk of matching the wrong elements. If your XML has mixed vocabularies (which may not be an issue for this instance) that use the same local-name()
, your XPath could match on the wrong elements and select the wrong content: