How can I select only the immediate parent node of a text string using xpath for every match

Question

Note: this differs from the following question in that here we have values appearing within a node and within a childnode of that same node:

XPath contains(text(),'some string') doesn't work when used with node with more than one Text subnode

Given the following html:

$content = 
'<html>
 <body>
  <div>
   <p>During the interim there shall be nourishment supplied</p>
  </div>
  <div>
   <p>During the <a href="#">interim</a> there shall be interim nourishment supplied</p>
  </div>
  <div>
   <ul><li>During the interim there shall be nourishment supplied</li></ul>
  </div>
 </body>
</html>';

And the following xpath:

//*[contains(text(),'interim')]

... only provides 3 matches, whereas I want four matches. As per comments, the four elements I'm expecting are P P A LI.

Why are you expecting 4 matches ? There are three nodes whose text contains `interim`, what exactly did you want ? parent nodes or the text nodes themselves ? — SomeDude, Aug 19 '16 at 18:23
@Paul. With respect I was asked to explain why the question is not a duplicate, not why an answer to another question does not answer my question. Thus my explanation is 100% relevant to the task given to me. Whether it suits some purpose that wasn't explained to me is not within my remit nor interest to comment on. — geoidesic, Sep 14 '16 at 14:21
@Paul having said that... your comments are welcome clarifications to the confusion I've had in getting to grips with xpath. — geoidesic, Sep 14 '16 at 14:23

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 21 '16 at 09:19

This works exactly as expected. See this glot.io link.

<?php

$html = <<<HTML
<html>
 <body>
  <div>
   <p>During the interim there shall be nourishment supplied</p>
  </div>
  <div>
   <p>During the <a href="#">interim</a> there shall be interim nourishment supplied</p>
  </div>
  <div>
   <ul><li>During the interim there shall be nourishment supplied</li></ul>
  </div>
 </body>
</html>
HTML;

$dom = new DOMDocument();
$dom->loadHTML($html);
$xpath = new DOMXPath($dom);

foreach($xpath->query('//*/text()[contains(.,"interim")]') as $n) var_dump($n->getNodePath());

You will get four matches:

/html/body/div[1]/p/text()
/html/body/div[2]/p/a/text()
/html/body/div[2]/p/text()[2]
/html/body/div[3]/ul/li/text()

@PaulCrovella Thanks for the feedback - I think someone could probably edit his question to make it more clear, as the answer above was given after extended chat with the original poster on IRC. IOW, the question is deficient in explaining what the user actually wanted, which is why I addressed the reply to "what is expected." — TML, Aug 22 '16 at 07:01

How can I select only the immediate parent node of a text string using xpath for every match

1 Answers1

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