Nokogiri: Select content between element A and B

Question

What\'s the smartest way to have Nokogiri select all content between the start and the stop element (including start-/stop-element)?

Check example code below to unde

Answer 1

For the sake of completeness a XPath only solution :)
It builds an intersection of two sets, the following siblings of the start element and the preceding siblings of the end element.

Basically you can build an intersection with:

  $a[count(.|$b) = count($b)]

A little divided on variables for readability:

@start_element = "//p[@id='para-3']"
@end_element = "//p[@id='para-7']"
@set_a = "#@start_element/following-sibling::*"
@set_b = "#@end_element/preceding-sibling::*"

@my_content = value.xpath("#@set_a[ count(.|#@set_b) = count(#@set_b) ]
                         | #@start_element | #@end_element")

Siblings don't include the element itself, so the start and end elements must be included in the expression separately.

Edit: Easier solution:

@start_element = "p[@id='para-3']"
@end_element = "p[@id='para-7']"
@my_content = value.xpath("//*[preceding-sibling::#@start_element and
                               following-sibling::#@end_element]
                         | //#@start_element | //#@end_element")