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Asked: 2026-05-28T14:18:56+00:00

I am trying to build a simple search-engine using HtmlAgilityPack and Xpath with C#

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I am trying to build a simple search-engine using HtmlAgilityPack and Xpath with C# (.NET 4).
I want to find every node containing a userdefined searchword, but I can’t seem to get the XPath right.
For Example:

<HTML>
 <BODY>
  <H1>Mr T for president</H1>
   <div>We believe the new president should be</div>
   <div>the awsome Mr T</div>
   <div>
    <H2>Mr T replies:</H2>
     <p>I pity the fool who doesn't vote</p>
     <p>for Mr T</p>
   </div>
  </BODY>
</HTML>

If the specified searchword is “Mr T” I’d want the following nodes: <H1>, The second <div>, <H2> and the second <p>.
I have tried numerous variants of doc.DocumentNode.SelectNodes("//text()[contains(., "+ searchword +")]"); but I always seem to wind up with every single node in the entire DOM.

Any hints to get me in the right direction would be very appreciated.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Use:

    //*[text()[contains(., 'Mr T')]]

    This selects all elements in the XML document that have a text-node child which contains the string 'Mr T'.

    This can also be written shorter as:

    //text()[contains(., 'Mr T')]/..

    This selects the parent(s) of any text node that contains the string 'Mr T'.

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