Question

writing this:

$likes = $xpath->query('//span[@class="LikesCount"]');

this is waht I get:

155 like

I would like to write the query so that number_before_like > 5

$likes = $xpath->query('

((int)substring-before(//span[@class="LikesCount"], " ")) > 5


');

Follows the markup:

<div class="pin">

[...]

<a href="/pin/56787645270909880/" class="PinImage ImgLink">
    <img src="http://media-cache-ec3.pinterest.com/upload/56787645270909880_d7AaHYHA_b.jpg" alt="Krizia" data-componenttype="MODAL_PIN" class="PinImageImg" style="height: 288px;">
</a>

<p class="stats colorless">
    <span class="LikesCount"> 
        2 likes 
    </span>
    <span class="RepinsCount">
        6 repins
    </span>
</p>

[...]

</div>

Answer 1

You can do this with XPath syntax alone, by making sure that extraneous whitespace is taken out of the picture.

$query = 'number(substring-before(normalize-space(
          //span[@class="LikesCount" 
          and substring-before(normalize-space(.), " ") > 5]), " "))';

$likes = $xpath->evaluate($query);

Alternatively, let PHP do the hard work for you.

$query = 'number(php:functionString("intval",
          //span[@class="LikesCount"
          and php:functionString("intval", .) > 5]))';

$xpath->registerNamespace('php', 'http://php.net/xpath');
$xpath->registerPHPFunctions("intval");
$likes = $xpath->evaluate($query);

If you’re going to start asking PHP to do some of the work, it might well just be easier to use a simple query and filter the results as you need.

foreach ($xpath->query('//span[@class="LikesCount"]') as $span) {
    $int = (int) $span->nodeValue;
    if ($int > 5) {
        echo $int;
    }
}