select parent node containing text inside children's node

ruby xpath nokogiri

14,686

Solution 1

You could append "/.." to anchor back to the parent. Not sure if there's a more robust method.

expression = "//div[contains(text(), 'Child text 1')]/.."

The following expression gives a node (div) in which any children nodes (not just h1,b,h3) contain specified text (not the div itself):

doc.xpath('//div[.//*[contains(text(), "Child text 1")]]')

you can refine that and return the only the div with the id contents like in your example:

doc.xpath('//div[@id="contents" and .//*[contains(text(), "Child text 1")]]')

It does not match, if the text is a text node of the div (directly inside the div), which is my interpretation of the question.

14,686

Author by

Updated on July 28, 2022

Admin almost 2 years
basically i want to select a node (div) in which it's children node's(h1,b,h3) contain specified text.
```
<html>
<div id="contents">
<p>
<h1> Child text 1</h1>
<b> Child text 2 </b>
...
</p>
<h3> Child text 3 </h3>
</div>
```
i am expecting, /html/div/ not /html/div/h1

i have this below, but unfortunately returns the children, instead of the xpath to the div.
```
expression = "//div[contains(text(), 'Child text 1')]"
doc.xpath(expression)
```
i am expecting, /html/div/ not /html/div/h1

So is there a way to do this simply with xpath syntax?
Admin over 14 years

what does that mean by append "/.."
meder omuraliev over 14 years

it means to add, try the example I just added.
Admin over 14 years

wow that works ! not sure what it means by anchor back to parent ? does it find the immediate ancestor? what if i need to go back to the root that contains the div ? so the parent's parent. would i just do expression = "//html[contains(text(), "Child text 1")]/.."