Question

the result of the following domdocument() call

$html = <<<EOT

<div class="list_item"> 
         <div class="list_item_content"> 

            <div class="list_item_title"> 
               <a href="/link/goes/here"> 
                  INFO<br /> 
                  <span class="part2">More Info</span><br /> 
                  <span class="part3">Etc.</span> 
               </a> 
            </div> 

      </div> 

EOT;

libxml_use_internal_errors(false);

$dom = new DOMDocument();
$dom->loadhtml($html);
$xpath = new DOMXPath($dom);

$titles_nodeList = $xpath->query('//div[@class="list_item"]/div[@class="list_item_content"]/div[@class="list_item_title"]/a');

foreach ($titles_nodeList as $title) {
    $titles[] = $title->nodeValue;
}

echo("<pre>");
print_r($titles);
echo("</pre>");


?>

is

Array
(
    [0] =>  
                  INFOMore InfoEtc. 

)

Why are data in these two spans inside the a element included in the result, when I am not specifying these spans in the path? I am interested only in retrieving data contained in the a element directly, not information contained in the spans inside the a element. I am wondering what I am doing wrong.

Answer 1

Try this xpath:

//div[@class="list_item"]/div[@class="list_item_content"]/div[@class="list_item_title"]/a/child::text()