Getting text from XPath but want elements?

Question

I am new to XPath so please bear with me. Basic question.

I want to select text, including the elements as well. Example input below:

<node1>   
    <node2>
        <node3>A1</node3>
        <node3>A2</node3>
        <node3>A3</node3>
        <node3>A4</node3>    
    </node2> 
</node1>

I wish to copy the content of node 2 including the tags, which is:

<node2>
    <node3>A1</node3>
    <node3>A2</node3>
    <node3>A3</node3>
    <node3>A4</node3>    
</node2> 

However, if I use the XPath /node1/node2/, I only get values A1 A2 A3 A4 (not the node2 and node3 tags).

Answer 1

The xpath /node1/node2 should return a list of nodes. Each node, depending on what language you are using contains attributes such as nodeName or nodeValue that you could use to access both the contained text and the name of the tag.

Answer 2

Correct XPath query to fetch div inner text

Use the text() function:

//node1/node2/text()

Answer 3

However if I use xpath as /node1/node2 - I only get values A1 A2 A3 A4 (not the node2 and node3 tags).

Incorrect. The XPath, /node1/node2 selects node2 element children of node1, not text nodes or strings. If you are seeing just A1 A2 A3 A4 for this XPath, then you are evaluating the XPath in a context that automatically converts to string values.

You do not need a new XPath; you need to evaluate the results of the XPath that you already have differently. For example, if you're using

<xsl:value-of select="/node1/node2"/>

you should instead be iterating over the nodeset or applying templates to all elements in the nodeset,

<xsl:apply-templates select="/node1/node2"/>

or in XSLT 2.0, returning a sequence,

<xsl:sequence select="/node1/node2"/>

etc, depending upon exactly what you need to do with the selected elements.

Answer 4

./node1/node()

or:

./node1/node2/../node()

When you want the whole HTML node, end the Xpath with /node().

Answer 5

to select node2 elements and everything inside of it use:

xPath: //node2/descendant-or-self::*

css: node2,node2 *

to select only inner content without node2 tag by itself:

xPath: //node2/descendant::*

css: node2 *