XPath : Find duplicate element values within the parent and not the whole XML

Question

I am trying to find the duplicate country in the following xml

<Forms>
    <Form_1>
        <Country>AFG</Country>
        <Country>AFG</Country>
        <Country>IND</Country>
    </Form_1>
    <Form_1>
        <Country>IND</Country>
        <Country>USA</Country>
    </Form_1>
</Forms>

Using this XPath expression

Forms//Form_1/Country[.=./following::Country]

It does give me the duplicate countries as AFG and IND but I want to find the duplicate countries within the scope of the parent Form_1 and not the whole document.

So for the above XML, my expected outcome is only AFG because it is duplicate within the one parent.

What should be adjustment that I should make to the xpath to get this desired result?

Which version of XSLT?

y.arazim
– y.arazim

2025-04-01 10:14:54 +00:00
Commented Apr 1 at 10:14 — y.arazim
– y.arazim, Commented Apr 1 at 10:14

Pawan Nogariya · Accepted Answer · 2025-04-01 06:41:07Z

-1

Found the solution. I just needed to replace following with following-sibling

So the final Xpath would be

Forms//Form_1/Country[.=./following-sibling::Country]

answered Apr 1 at 6:41

Pawan Nogariya

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4 Comments

michael.hor257k Apr 1 at 10:05

This is not the best solution, see here why: jenitennison.com/xslt/grouping/muenchian.html.

y.arazim Apr 1 at 11:51

What if the input has 3 or more occurrences of AFG instead of just 2? Your expression will select all of them except the last one.

Pawan Nogariya Apr 2 at 4:55

@y.arazim I do not want to select the last one, I just want to know the duplicate countries, no matter how many times they are repeated. When I will receive the result I will distinct them, so the final list that I will get will be the countries which are appearing more than once within one form.

y.arazim Apr 3 at 13:35

I don't think you understand my point: you will not select the last one. But you will select all the other occurrences of a duplicate value, not just one of them. I don't know what you mean by "I will distinct them". If you have a tool that can return distinct values, you should use a completely different method.

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