XPath find text in any text node

Question

I am trying to find a certain text in any text node in a document, so far my statement looks like this:

doc.xpath(\"//text() = \'Alliance Consulting\'\") do          


        

Answer 1

This expression //text() = 'Alliance Consulting' evals to a boolean.

In case of this test sample:

    Alliance Consulting
    
        
Test string
            Alliance Consulting
        
    
    
        Alliance Consulting
        
            Other string
        
    

It will return true of course.

Expression you need should evaluate to node-set, so use:

//text()[. = 'Alliance Consulting']

E.g. expression:

count(//text()[normalize-space() = 'Alliance Consulting'])

against the above document will return 3.

To select text nodes which contain 'Alliance Consulting' in the whole string value (e.g. 'Alliance Consulting provides great services') use:

//text()[contains(.,'Alliance Consulting')]

Do note that adjacent text nodes should become one after parser gets to the document.