Microsoft DOM Objects Reference

selectSingleNode()

Syntax

Set objXMLDOMNode = objXMLDOMElement.selectSingleNode(strXQLQuery)

Remark

Once again, as in the selectNodes() method, selectSingleNode() uses XQL to find the required Node. However, it only returns a single Node, XMLDOMNode object, which is the first Node that matches the pattern if it's found. If no match is found, it returns NULL.

Example

The selectNodes() and selectSingle-Node() methods can also be used to search for Nodes that have certain attribute values. As we mentioned, you will need to do a bit of research to work out how to work with XQL, which we do not cover in detail here.

In the following example, we iterate through all the childNodes in the documentElement collection. We only want to find the NAME element in each PERSON element.

Dim objDOMDocument As DOMDocument

Dim objXMLDOMNode As IXMLDOMNode

Dim objElement As IXMLDOMElement

Set objDOMDocument = New DOMDocument

objDOMDocument.async = False

objDOMDocument.Load "http://localhost/xmlcode/people2.xml"

For Each objXMLDOMNode In objDOMDocument.documentElement.childNodes

Set objElement = objXMLDOMNode.selectSingleNode("NAME")

' do something with this name element

Next

Look at getElementsByTagName(), which does almost the same thing as this method. The beauty of this method, however, is that it returns a single Node instead of an XMLDOMNodeList. Therefore, this method is easier to work with, as you don't need to iterate through a NodeList collection to just get the one value out of it.

This manuscript is an abridged version of a chapter from the Manning Publications book XML Programming with VB and ASP. This chapter looks at the Microsoft DOM objects. NOTE: Most images have been removed to increase speed and many of the code comments have also been removed for presentation. Please purchase the book to enjoy the full experience of all the chapters with images and code comments!