xpath

see http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath#path-abbrev // is just an abbreviation for the descendant:: axis Edit To quote: //para is short for /descendant-or-self::node()/child::para That is, it refers to all para which are a child of the context node or any node descended from the context node. As far as I can tell that translates into any descendant para of … Read more

To get the string value of div use: string(/div) This is the concatenation of all text nodes that are descendents of the (top) div element. To select all text node descendents of div use: /div//text() To get only the text nodes that are direct children of div use: /div/text() Finally, get the first (and hopefully … Read more

This will retrieve all text elements with a parent ul element. //ul/descendant::*/text()

Can someone explain the difference between text() and string() functions. I. text() isn’t a function but a node test. It is used to select all text-node children of the context node. So, if the context node is an element named x, then text() selects all text-node children of x. Other examples: /a/b/c/text() selects all text-node … Read more

This expression //text() = ‘Alliance Consulting’ evals to a boolean. In case of this test sample: <r> <t>Alliance Consulting</t> <s> <p>Test string <f>Alliance Consulting</f> </p> </s> <z> Alliance Consulting <y> Other string </y> </z> </r> It will return true of course. Expression you need should evaluate to node-set, so use: //text()[. = ‘Alliance Consulting’] E.g. … Read more

This should work: //*[ancestor::foo[bar[@attr=”val”]]] or alternatively root/foo/bar[ancestor::foo[bar[@attr=”val”]]] matches the second <bar> element <root> <foo> <bar attr=”xxx”></bar> </foo> <foo> <bar attr=”val”></bar> </foo> <foo> <bar attr=”zzz”></bar> </foo> </root>

“has a descendant named interestintag” is spelled .//interestintag in XPath, so the expression you are looking for is: //table[@name=”important”]/tr[.//interestingtag]