Question

How would I select all the tables between the table whose id is header_completed and the first table after the header_completed one that has an align of center? Here is the html I am selecting it from:

<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="920" align="center"></table>
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="920"></table>
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="920"></table>
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="920" align="center" class="header_completed"></table>
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="920"></table> <--          -->
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="920"></table> <--          -->
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="920"></table> <-- these 5  -->
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="920"></table> <--          -->
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="920"></table> <--          -->
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="920" align="center"></table>
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="920"></table>
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="920"></table>
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="920" align="center"></table>

I tried using //table[@id="header_completed"]/following-sibling::node()[following-sibling::table[@align="center"][1]] but it didn’t work.

Answer 1

I believe this XPath expression selects the nodes you want:

//table[@class="header_completed"]/
    following-sibling::table[@align="center"][1]/
        preceding-sibling::table[
            preceding-sibling::table[@class="header_completed"]
        ]

First I navigate to the table with @class="header_completed".

From there I select the first following sibling table with @align="center".

From there I select all preceding sibling tables that have a preceding sibling which is the table with @class="header_completed".