CODEWITHSUNDEEP
htmlxmlxpath
Oleg Golovanov
Oleg Golovanov

Reputation: 924

Retrieving elements with preceding-sibling non-empty text nodes in XPath

Given test html:

<html>
<body>
  abc
  <b id="b_1">def</b>
  ghi
  <b id="b_2">jkl</b>
  <b id="b_3">mno</b><b id="b_4">qrs</b>
</body>
</html>

Question: How can i select all b elements whose first preceding-sibling node are non-empty text nodes?

So, in the example above, I wish to select elements b_1 and b_2.

Element b_3 has first preceding sibling node of type text, but it's empty.

Element b_4 has first preceding sibling node that is element node.

I've tried the following, but they both fail in at least one respect:

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1774

Answers (2)

eLRuLL
eLRuLL

Reputation: 18799

This one should work:

//b[normalize-space(./preceding-sibling::text()[1])]

The normalize-space function is the one checking that something exists there, because the preceding-sibling could be empty or even just a \n.

Upvotes: -1

kjhughes
kjhughes

Reputation: 111726

This XPath,

//b[preceding-sibling::node()[1][self::text()][.!='']]

will select all b elements whose immediately preceding sibling is a non-empty text node:

<b id="b_1">def</b>
<b id="b_2">jkl</b>

as requested.

Upvotes: 2

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