Question

I’ve a html file and want to locate the table(among many) with second TH content of “Stn Code” and 3rd TH content of “Route No.”. What will be the XPATH expression in php to get this particular table:

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0">
    <tbody>
        <tr class="heading_table_top">
            <th width="6%">SNo</th>
            <th width="9%">Stn Code</th>
            <th width="17%">Stn Name</th>
            <th width="9%">Route No.</th>
            <th width="9%">Arrival Time</th>
            <th width="9%">Dep. Time</th>
            <th width="15%">Halt Time (In Minutes)</th>
            <th width="9%">Distance</th>
            <th width="6%">Day</th>
            <th width="20%">Remark</th>

…………………………….

Answer 1

This will find the table with the specified content regardless of which th the content contains:

//table[descendant::th="Stn Code" and descendant::th="Route No."]

The descendant axis contains the descendants of the context node; a descendant is a child or a child of a child and so on; thus the descendant axis never contains attribute or namespace nodes.

demo

If you want to make sure the content is in specific th elements, use th[n] where n is the position, e.g. for the “second TH content of “Stn Code” and 3rd TH content of “Route No.”. you’d use th[2] and th[3]. Positions are 1-based.

//table[descendant::th[2]="Stn Code" and descendant::th[3]="Route No."]

Note that in your example markup “Route No.” is in th[4] so the above XPath will not produce the table in the result nodes.

Also have a look at this XPath tutorial.