XPATH - Selecting text within a node without a child

Question

I am really new to xpath and was hoping that I could get some guidance. I have the following XML:

<dd class="conten1">
    <li class="">
      <b> Some text here </b>
      <b> another text here </b>
      <span class="date-range">2014 – Present</span>
    </li>
</dd>

I have run the following xpath:

.//dd[contains(@class, 'conten1')]/li

and it returns:

Some text here another text here2014 - Present

How do I remove the "span" portion and only get

Some text here another text here

I have run

substring-before(.//dd[contains(@class, 'conten1')]/li,'201')

but this is not ideal as some of the entrees do not contain that span portion thus, would not be retrieved at all.

What I wish to grab is only the "Some text here another text here" portion consistently.

Really hope for some help and thank you in advance.

Thank you for this and it helps a lot. What if the text comes in the following format text 1 text 2 <span class = ....... For do I select all of the b — user6566794
– user6566794, Commented Jul 8, 2016 at 19:52
What is your criterion for knowing what to grab? Do you want all the text from  elements only? All the text from non- elements? The XPath expression 'Some text here another text here' will give you what you asked for, but I assume that's not what you want. — LarsH
– LarsH, Commented Jul 8, 2016 at 21:51

Alexander Petrov · Accepted Answer · 2016-07-08 21:07:38Z

2

If you need only the b nodes, then XPath may look like

//dd[contains(@class, 'conten1')]/li/b

If you need all nodes except the span, then the XPath may look like

//dd[contains(@class, 'conten1')]/li/*[name(.)!='span']

answered Jul 8, 2016 at 21:07

Alexander Petrov

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1 Comment

LarsH Over a year ago

+1. I would replace the *[name(.)!='span'] at the end with *[not(self::span)], which may reduce string comparisons.

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