XPath: select text node

Question

Having the following XML:

<node>Text1<subnode/>text2</node>

How do I select either the first or the second text node via XPath?

Something like this:

/node/text()[2]

of course doesn't work because it's the merged result of every text inside the node.

You wrote: /node/text()[2] [...] doesn't work because it's the merged result of every text inside the node That's wrong: it means second text node child of node root element. The string value (concatenation of descendant text nodes) would be string(/node) — user357812
– user357812, Commented Feb 17, 2011 at 20:11
You mean that Xpath query should work? Well, I guess I have another problem somewhere else then. ;) Thanks! — kernel
– kernel, Commented Feb 17, 2011 at 20:16

Dimitre Novatchev · Accepted Answer · 2011-02-18 05:45:07Z

226

Having the following XML:
<node>Text1<subnode/>text2</node> 
How do I select either the first or the second text node via XPath?

Use:

/node/text()

This selects all text-node children of the top element (named "node") of the XML document.

/node/text()[1]

This selects the first text-node child of the top element (named "node") of the XML document.

/node/text()[2]

This selects the second text-node child of the top element (named "node") of the XML document.

/node/text()[someInteger]

This selects the someInteger-th text-node child of the top element (named "node") of the XML document. It is equivalent to the following XPath expression:

/node/text()[position() = someInteger]

answered Feb 18, 2011 at 5:45

Dimitre Novatchev

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3 Comments

Aaron Gillion Over a year ago

Does this work in PHP? I'm trying to loop through only text nodes, even those in-between a set of tags. The problem is that is smashing the content of multiple text nodes together, regardless of tags. Using //*[text()] anyway. /html/text() does not work.

Dimitre Novatchev Over a year ago

@AaronGillion, Yes, AFAIK PHP has a correctly working XPath 1.0 evaluation. Do note that /html/text() doesn't select all text nodes in the document -- only the text nodes that are children (not descendents) of the top, html element. You probably want /html//text() . Some knowledge and understanding of XPath is typically required in order to construct XPath expressions.

Aaron Gillion Over a year ago

Thanks. I figured out the double-slash trick a little bit ago!

hakre · Accepted Answer · 2011-06-20 21:24:43Z

33

your xpath should work . i have tested your xpath and mine in both MarkLogic and Zorba Xquery/ Xpath implementation.

Both should work.

/node/child::text()[1] - should return Text1
/node/child::text()[2] - should return text2


/node/text()[1] - should return Text1
/node/text()[2] - should return text2

edited Jun 20, 2011 at 21:24

hakre

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answered Feb 17, 2011 at 20:18

kadalamittai

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