last Function (XPath)
Returns a number equal to context size of the expression evaluation context.
number last()
Remarks
The following finds the last <author> child of each <book> element:
book/author[last()]
Example
In this example we illustrate how to use the last() function to select the last y elment contained in each x element of the following XML document.
XML FILE (test.xml)
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE test [
<!ELEMENT test (x+)>
<!ELEMENT x (x+| y+)>
<!ATTLIST x
a ID #REQUIRED>
<!ELEMENT y ANY>
]>
<test>
<x a="a11">
<x a="a21">
<x a="a31">
<y>y31</y>
<y>y32</y>
</x>
</x>
</x>
<x a="a12">
<x a="a22">
<y>y21</y>
<y>y22</y>
</x>
</x>
<x a="a13">
<y>y11</y>
<y>y12</y>
</x>
<x a="a14">
<y>y03</y>
<y>y04</y>
</x>
</test>
XSLT File (test.xsl)
Pay attention to the instruction in bold in this XSLT stylesheet.
<?xml version='1.0'?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="xml" omit-xml-declaration="yes"/>
<!-- Suppress text nodes not covered in subsequent
template rule -->
<xsl:template match="text()"/>
<xsl:template match="*">
<xsl:element name="{name()}">
<xsl:apply-templates select="*|@*"/>
<xsl:if test="text()">
<xsl:value-of select="."/>
</xsl:if>
</xsl:element>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="@*">
<xsl:attribute name="{name()}">
<xsl:value-of select="."/>
</xsl:attribute>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="/test">
<xsl:apply-templates select="//x/y[last()]"/>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
Output
The XSLT stylesheet, when applied to the XML file above results in the following node-set:
<y>y32</y>
<y>y22</y>
<y>y12</y>
<y>y04</y>