xpath to get Node containing text

Question

I tried to search for nodes containing text 'Yahoo' under '/doc/story/content', it returns 'content' node, but I need exact text node that contains 'Yahoo' or it's parent

<doc>
    <story>
        <content id="201009281450332423">
            <ul>MSW NYNES NYPG1 DILMA</ul>
            <p> <k> Yahoo, made </k> it nice </p>
            <p>
               <author>-v-</author>
            </p>
        </content>
    </story>
</doc>

Xpath: "/doc/story/content[contains(., 'Yahoo')]"

Nakilon · Accepted Answer · 2015-10-09 08:56:28Z

60

Since you need all textNodes only which contain the text Yahoo, use the following XPath.

//text()[contains(., 'Yahoo')]

This should return you all the textNodes only which contains Yahoo (case-sensitive) in it.

edited Oct 9, 2015 at 8:56

Nakilon

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answered Jun 22, 2011 at 16:10

Ravish

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2 Comments

Nakilon Over a year ago

What it the difference between this answer and @Jon's?

Stefan Steiger Over a year ago

Case insensitive: //text()[contains(translate(., 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZÄÖÜÉÈÊÀÁÂÒÓÔÙÚÛÇÅÏÕÑŒ', 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzäöüéèêàáâòóôùúûçåïõñœ'),'yahoo')]

Jon · Accepted Answer · 2014-01-21 10:25:46Z

42

Your XML is malformed. </content></doc></story> should be </content></story></doc>.

Apart from that, the XPath you would want is

/doc/story/content//*[contains(., 'Yahoo')]

(select any descendant of <content> which contains the text "Yahoo" -- this will select the <p>)

edited Jan 21, 2014 at 10:25

answered Jun 22, 2011 at 15:29

Jon

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7 Comments

Vjy Over a year ago

This works great if it's one level down, How to make it work for multi-nested tags?

Jon Over a year ago

@Vjy: I 'm not sure what you mean. Can you give an example?

Vjy Over a year ago

Updated the above xml with additional tag <K>, it should select K instead of P tag. this is just example, the text node can be n level deep.

Emiliano Poggi Over a year ago

@Vjy: this does exactly what you asked for.

Jason S Over a year ago

text() is a node test not a string. contains() expects strings. See stackoverflow.com/a/9493870/695671 Your solution may appear to work, but I have a case with text nodes within text nodes in which case it fails.

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