Question

I am using following XPath to pick some data from an html page. The value I am trying to pick has some spaces in between:

example=value1    value2       value3

My XPath expression is picking the value but removes extra spaces between text like this:

value1 value2 value3

How do I make sure that extra spaces are not removed?

My xpath:

//*something/div/input[1]/@value

Sample HTML from where I am picking value:

<input type="radio" name='radio1' value="R92392   12132                           sdlasldkaskl                  " id='some' >

Note that I am getting the value as R92392 12132 sdlasldkaskl. But I want the spaces between text to be preserved.

Answer 1

My XPath engine doesn’t remove the whitespaces so it must be due to a PHP setting. I’m not exactly sure about your situation as you didn’t provide much code but the following might work you:

$doc->preserveWhiteSpace = true; // This setting should fix it
$doc->Load('document.xml');
$xpath = new DOMXPath($doc);
$query = '//div/input[1]/@value';