XPath Expression Problem

Question

I have the following HTML snippet, http://paste.enzotools.org/show/1209/ , and I want to extract the tag that has a text() descendant with the value of "172.80" (it's the fourth node from that snippet). My attempts so far have been:

'descendant::td[@class="roomPrice figure" and contains(descendant::text(), "172.80")]'
'descendant::td[@class="roomPrice figure" and contains(div/text(), "172.80")]'
'descendant::td[@class="roomPrice figure" and div[contains(text(), "172.80")]]'

but neither of them selects anything. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Answer 1

When passing node set to function calls, do note that if the function signature doesn't declare a node set argument then it will cast the the first node from that node set.

So, I think you need this XPath expression:

descendant::td[@class="roomPrice figure"][div[text()[contains(.,'172.80')]]]

Test for a text node child of div

or

descendant::td[@class="roomPrice figure"]
              [div[descendant::text()[contains(.,'172.80')]]]

Test for a text node descendant of div

or

descendant::td[@class="roomPrice figure"]
              [descendant::text()[contains(.,'172.80')]]

Test for a text node descendat of td

Answer 2

I believe you want something like this:

<xsl:for-each select="//td[contains(string(.), '172.80')]">

The string() function will give you all the text in the current and descendant nodes wherease text() just gives you the text in the current (context) node.

Of course, you extend the xpath selector to filter on the class names too...

<xsl:for-each select="//td[contains(string(.), '172.80')][@class='roomPrice figure']">

And as stated in the comments above, you're posted xml/html is invalid as it stands.

Answer 3

My understanding is that you want to select the td element in specified class, that has a descendant text node containing the value "172.80".

I'm assuming the context node is the <tr> (or some ancestor of it).

The attempts you listed all suffer from the problem that contains() converts its first argument to a single string, using only the first node of the nodeset. So if the td or div has a descendant or child text node before the one that contains "172.80", the one containing "172.80" will not be noticed.

Try this:

'descendant::td[@class="roomPrice figure" and
                descendant::text()[contains(., "172.80")]]'