EXISTSNODE

Syntax

Description of the illustration existsnode.gif

Purpose

EXISTSNODE determines whether traversal of an XML document using a specified path results in any nodes. It takes as arguments the XMLType instance containing an XML document and a VARCHAR2 XPath string designating a path. The optional namespace_string must resolve to a VARCHAR2 value that specifies a default mapping or namespace mapping for prefixes, which Oracle Database uses when evaluating the XPath expression(s).

The namespace_string argument defaults to the namespace of the root element. If you refer to any subelement in Xpath_string, then you must specify namespace_string, and you must specify the "who" prefix in both of these arguments.

The return value is NUMBER:

• 0 if no nodes remain after applying the XPath traversal on the document

• 1 if any nodes remain

Examples

The following example tests for the existence of the /Warehouse/Dock node in the XML path of the warehouse_spec column of the sample table oe.warehouses:

SELECT warehouse_id, warehouse_name
   FROM warehouses
   WHERE EXISTSNODE(warehouse_spec, '/Warehouse/Docks') = 1;

WAREHOUSE_ID WAREHOUSE_NAME
------------ -----------------------------------
           1 Southlake, Texas
           2 San Francisco
           4 Seattle, Washington