Question

I’m having trouble understanding the difference between text() and node(). From what I understand, text() would be whatever is in between the tags <item>apple</item> which is apple in this case. Node would be whatever that node actually is, which would be item

But then I’ve been assigned some work where it asks me to “Select the text of all items under produce” and a separate question asks “Select all the manager nodes in all departments”

How is the output suppose to look text() as opposed to node()

Snippet of XML:

<produce>
 <item>apple</item>
 <item>banana</item>
 <item>pepper</item>
</produce>

<department>
 <phone>123-456-7891</phone>
 <manager>John</manager>
</department>

Of course, there are more departments and more managers, but this was just a snippet of code.

Any help would be much appreciated!

Answer 1

text() and node() are node tests, in XPath terminology (compare).

Node tests operate on a set (on an axis, to be exact) of nodes and return the ones that are of a certain type. When no axis is mentioned, the child axis is assumed by default.

There are all kinds of node tests:

• node() matches any node (the least specific node test of them all)
• text() matches text nodes only
• comment() matches comment nodes
• * matches any element node
• foo matches any element node named "foo"
• processing-instruction() matches PI nodes (they look like <?name value?>).
• Side note: The * also matches attribute nodes, but only along the attribute axis. @* is a shorthand for attribute::*. Attributes are not part of the child axis, that’s why a normal * does not select them.

This XML document:

<produce>
    <item>apple</item>
    <item>banana</item>
    <item>pepper</item>
</produce>

represents the following DOM (simplified):

root node
   element node (name="produce")
      text node (value="\n    ")
      element node (name="item")
         text node (value="apple")
      text node (value="\n    ")
      element node (name="item")
         text node (value="banana")
      text node (value="\n    ")
      element node (name="item")
         text node (value="pepper")
      text node (value="\n")

So with XPath:

• / selects the root node
• /produce selects a child element of the root node if it has the name "produce" (This is called the document element; it represents the document itself. Document element and root node are often confused, but they are not the same thing.)
• /produce/node() selects any type of child node beneath /produce/ (i.e. all 7 children)
• /produce/text() selects the 4 (!) whitespace-only text nodes
• /produce/item[1] selects the first child element named "item"
• /produce/item[1]/text() selects all child text nodes (there’s only one – “apple” – in this case)

And so on.

So, your questions

• “Select the text of all items under produce” /produce/item/text() (3 nodes selected)
• “Select all the manager nodes in all departments” //department/manager (1 node selected)

Notes

• The default axis in XPath is the child axis. You can change the axis by prefixing a different axis name. For example: //item/ancestor::produce
• Element nodes have text values. When you evaluate an element node, its textual contents will be returned. In case of this example, /produce/item[1]/text() and string(/produce/item[1]) will be the same.
• Also see this answer where I outline the individual parts of an XPath expression graphically.