I can't navigate the XML doc programmatically and I need an one-line XPath solution for reasons I describe at the end.
I am working with an XML schema that looks something like the one below. (This is something I have to use as-is.)
<Root>
<!-- Child 1 -->
<Child>
<Name>Joe</Name>
<Age>12</Age>
</Child>
<!-- Child 2 -->
<Child>
<Name>Mike</Name>
<Age>25</Age>
</Child>
<!-- Child 3 -->
<Child>
<Name>Jane</Name>
<Age>20</Age>
</Child>
</Root>
Assuming I'm already at the "Joe" node (i.e. the Name element inside Child 1), I need to define an XPath query that will "wrap" that node as follows:
<Root>
<!-- Child 1 -->
<Child>
<Name>Joe</Name>
<Age>12</Age>
</Child>
</Root>
I've tried various combinations of ancestor, string-join, concat, etc., but can't seem to find the solution that "wraps" the element correctly. (The way I was using ancestor was returning all Child nodes, for example, which is not what I need.)
Some other considerations:
NOTE: For what it's worth, I can't actually navigate the XML programmatically. I am using a library (whose code I cannot change) in which I have to define everything in terms of one-line XPath queries within a configuration file. It will essentially navigate through all of the Name elements, so my solution has to work from that point.
XPath is a query language.
This, among other things means that the evaluation of an XPath expression never modifies the XML document.
So, the answer is: Modifying an XML document or creating a new document cannot be done using only XPath.
Such transformations are very easy and natural to specify with XSLT.