Determining which choice exists

[kjkrum]

I'm using XPath to read a document. One of my nodes contains a choice element with minOccurs="0". The tag can be PushState, PopState, or SetState.

I've been calling XPath.evaluate(...) for each of those possibilities and testing if the result is null. Is there a more straightforward way to find out which tag, if any, is present?

Node transitionNode = (Node) xp.evaluate("PushState", node, XPathConstants.NODE);
		if(transitionNode != null) {
			transitionType = TransitionType.PUSH;
			transitionState = transitionNode.getTextContent();
		}
		else {
			transitionNode = (Node) xp.evaluate("PopState", node, XPathConstants.NODE);
			if(transitionNode != null) {
				transitionType = TransitionType.POP;
				transitionState = null;
			}
			else {
				transitionNode = (Node) xp.evaluate("SetState", node, XPathConstants.NODE);
				if(transitionNode != null) {
					transitionType = TransitionType.SET;
					transitionState = transitionNode.getTextContent();
				}
			}
		}

[2by4]

I'm using XPath to read a document. One of my nodes contains a choice element with minOccurs="0". The tag can be PushState, PopState, or SetState.

I've been calling XPath.evaluate(...) for each of those possibilities and testing if the result is null. Is there a more straightforward way to find out which tag, if any, is present?

Node transitionNode = (Node) xp.evaluate("PushState", node, XPathConstants.NODE);
		if(transitionNode != null) {
			transitionType = TransitionType.PUSH;
			transitionState = transitionNode.getTextContent();
		}
		else {
			transitionNode = (Node) xp.evaluate("PopState", node, XPathConstants.NODE);
			if(transitionNode != null) {
				transitionType = TransitionType.POP;
				transitionState = null;
			}
			else {
				transitionNode = (Node) xp.evaluate("SetState", node, XPathConstants.NODE);
				if(transitionNode != null) {
					transitionType = TransitionType.SET;
					transitionState = transitionNode.getTextContent();
				}
			}
		}

It depends on the schema and how much you can assume about the node's position and attributes, etc. If it is guaranteed to be the first or last child node, you could use a predicate, for example. If its position is complex, could you search for a signature attribute if there is a unique one. Either way, you could then retrieve and test the node's name. But if has no identifying signature or position, I guess you'd have to enumerate them by name, as you have done.