XPath – Difference between node() and text()

text() and node() are node tests, in XPath terminology (compare).

Node tests operate on a set (on an axis, to be exact) of nodes and return the ones that are of a certain type. When no axis is mentioned, the child axis is assumed by default.

There are all kinds of node tests:

• node() matches any node (the least specific node test of them all)
• text() matches text nodes only
• comment() matches comment nodes
• * matches any element node
• foo matches any element node named "foo"
• processing-instruction() matches PI nodes (they look like <?name value?>).
• Side note: The * also matches attribute nodes, but only along the attribute axis. @* is a shorthand for attribute::*. Attributes are not part of the child axis, that’s why a normal * does not select them.

This XML document:

<produce>
    <item>apple</item>
    <item>banana</item>
    <item>pepper</item>
</produce>

represents the following DOM (simplified):

root node
   element node (name="produce")
      text node (value="\n    ")
      element node (name="item")
         text node (value="apple")
      text node (value="\n    ")
      element node (name="item")
         text node (value="banana")
      text node (value="\n    ")
      element node (name="item")
         text node (value="pepper")
      text node (value="\n")

So with XPath:

• / selects the root node
• /produce selects a child element of the root node if it has the name "produce" (This is called the document element; it represents the document itself. Document element and root node are often confused, but they are not the same thing.)
• /produce/node() selects any type of child node beneath /produce/ (i.e. all 7 children)
• /produce/text() selects the 4 (!) whitespace-only text nodes
• /produce/item[1] selects the first child element named "item"
• /produce/item[1]/text() selects all child text nodes (there’s only one – “apple” – in this case)

And so on.

So, your questions

• “Select the text of all items under produce” /produce/item/text() (3 nodes selected)
• “Select all the manager nodes in all departments” //department/manager (1 node selected)

Notes

• The default axis in XPath is the child axis. You can change the axis by prefixing a different axis name. For example: //item/ancestor::produce
• Element nodes have text values. When you evaluate an element node, its textual contents will be returned. In case of this example, /produce/item[1]/text() and string(/produce/item[1]) will be the same.
• Also see this answer where I outline the individual parts of an XPath expression graphically.