Selecting all text nodes in between two processing instructions with XPATH

Question

I have some following XML:

  

    
    test 
    test
    test

        

Answer 1

I recommend using xal:for-each-group as suggested in the first comment by Maring Honnen. The other XPath approaches allow you to select the content between two processing instructions, but it will be hard to embed that in an xslt stylesheet that should do other things as well, like copying existing structure at the same time. Here a minimal approach using for-each-group:

xquery version "1.0-ml";

let $xml :=
  <content>
    <p>
      before
      <?change-addition-start?>
      test 
      <em>test</em>
      <strong>test</strong>
      <?change-addition-end?>
      after
    </p>
  </content>

let $xsl :=
  <xsl:stylesheet version="2.0"
    xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

    <xsl:template match="@*|node()" mode="#all">
      <xsl:copy>
        <xsl:apply-templates select="@*|node()" mode="#current"/>
      </xsl:copy>
    </xsl:template>

    <xsl:template match="*[processing-instruction()]">
      <xsl:variable name="parent" select="." />

      <xsl:for-each-group select="node()" group-starting-with="processing-instruction()">
        <xsl:choose>
          <xsl:when test="self::processing-instruction('change-addition-start')">
            <ins>
              <xsl:apply-templates select="current-group()" mode="identity"/>
            </ins>
          </xsl:when>

          <xsl:otherwise>
            <xsl:apply-templates select="current-group()" mode="identity"/>
          </xsl:otherwise>
        </xsl:choose>
      </xsl:for-each-group>
    </xsl:template>

  </xsl:stylesheet>

return xdmp:xslt-eval($xsl, $xml)

Use a second for-each-group with group-ending-by as suggested by Martin if you like to get the end PI inside the <ins> tag. The above might be sufficient though.

HTH!