XPath to return string concatenation of qualifying child node values

Question

Can anyone please suggest an XPath expression format that returns a string value containing the concatenated values of certain qualifying child nodes of an element, but ignoring others:

<div>
    This text node should be returned.
    <em>And the value of this element.</em>
    And this.
    <p>But this paragraph element should be ignored.</p>
</div>

The returned value should be a single string:

This text node should be returned. And the value of this element. And this.

Is this possible in a single XPath expression?

Thanks.

Answer 1

This look that works:

Using as context "/div/":

"text() | em/text()"

Or without the use of context:

"/div/text() | /div/em/text()"

It's ok?

If you want to concat the first two strings, use this:

"concat(/div/text(), /div/em/text())"

Answer 2

/div//text()

double slash forces to extract text regardless of intermediate nodes

Answer 3

You can use

/div//text()[not(parent::p)]

to capture the wanted text nodes. The concatenation itself cannot be done in XPath, I recommend doing it in the "outside" application.

Answer 4

In XPath 2.0 :

string-join(/*/node()[not(self::p)], '')