Simultaneously escape double and single quotes in Xpath

Question

Similar to How to deal with single quote in xpath, I want to escape single quotes. The difference is that I can\'t exclude the possibility that a double quote might also app

Answer 1

use quote() for xpath query

library(XML)

only single quote inside string

target1 <- "Father's son"
doc1 <- XML::newHTMLDoc()
newXMLNode("div", 1, parent = getNodeSet(doc1, "//body"), doc = doc1)
newXMLNode("div", target1, parent = getNodeSet(doc1, "//body"), doc = doc1)
xpath_query1 <- paste0('//*[ contains(text(), ', '"', target1, '"', ')]')
getNodeSet(doc1, xpath_query1)

both single and double quote inside string

target2 <- "Fat\"her's son"
doc2 <- XML::newHTMLDoc()
newXMLNode("div", 1, parent = getNodeSet(doc2, "//body"), doc = doc2)
newXMLNode("div", target2, parent = getNodeSet(doc2, "//body"), doc = doc2)
xpath_query2 <- quote('//body/*[contains(.,concat(\'Fat"\',"her\'s son"))]')
getNodeSet(doc2, xpath_query2)

Output:

getNodeSet(doc1, xpath_query1)
# [[1]]
# 
Father's son
 
# 
# attr(,"class")
# [1] "XMLNodeSet"

getNodeSet(doc2, xpath_query2)
# [[1]]
# 
Fat"her's son
 
# 
# attr(,"class")
# [1] "XMLNodeSet"