Finds and returns the first node that matches the supplied xpath.

XPath.first( node )
XPath.first( doc, "//b"} )
XPath.first( node, "a/x:b", { "x"=>"http://doofus" } )

Source Code

# File rexml/xpath.rb, line 22
def XPath::first element, path=nil, namespaces=nil, variables={}
  raise "The namespaces argument, if supplied, must be a hash object." unless namespaces.nil? or namespaces.kind_of?(Hash)
  raise "The variables argument, if supplied, must be a hash object." unless variables.kind_of?(Hash)
                    parser = XPathParser.new
                    parser.namespaces = namespaces
                    parser.variables = variables
                    path = "*" unless path
                    element = [element] unless element.kind_of? Array
                    parser.parse(path, element).flatten[0]
            end