Question

I’m using JTidy in order to parse web page data.
My question is the following:

It is possible to call the XPath.evalate method on a previously retrieved node?

I’ll explain better.
Usually you use the xmlPath.evaluate(pattern, document, XPathConstants.NODE) method call to retrieve a list of nodes matching your xpath expression.

Once tht i’ve retrieved a node or nodeList, how can I do xmlPath.evaluate starting from the previous retrieved node, something similar to
xmlPath.evaluate(pattern, node, XPathConstants.NODE)

Answer 1

Yes, I think it is possible:

URL url = new URL("http://www.w3.org");

// configure JTidy
Tidy tidy = new Tidy();
tidy.setXHTML(true);
tidy.setQuiet(true);
tidy.setXmlOut(true);
tidy.setShowWarnings(false);

Document doc = tidy.parseDOM(url.openConnection().getInputStream(), null);
XPath xpath = XPathFactory.newInstance().newXPath();

XPathExpression expr =
xpath.compile("//form[@action = 'http://www.w3.org/Help/search']");

Node form = (Node) expr.evaluate(doc, XPathConstants.NODE);

// create relative XPath    
expr = xpath.compile("ul/li[@class = 'last-item']/a");
Node lastItem = (Node) expr.evaluate(form, XPathConstants.NODE);

System.out.println(lastItem.getFirstChild().getNodeValue());

Returns:

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