XPath operator
text() node test
Selects text-node children, including indentation whitespace as well as the words a reader sees.
text() selects text nodes, not an element's recursively collected string-value. Direct character data and indentation whitespace are separate child nodes; text inside a nested element belongs to that nested element.
Use string(.) or normalize-space(.) when you want the combined textual value of an element. Use text() when the distinction between direct text and nested markup matters.
- Syntax
child::text() — usually text()- Returns
- node-set
- Kind
- Operator
- Version
- XPath 1.0 (libxml2)
Worked examples
Each result below is what the evaluator returned, asserted on every test run. An empty result means an empty node-set — which is an answer, not an error.
What catches people out
- Pretty-printing creates whitespace text nodes, so text()[1] may be a newline rather than visible content.
- text() selects direct children only. Descendant text needs .//text() or the element's string-value.
- An attribute has a string-value but no text-node child, so @id/text() selects nothing.
The sample documents
Every example on this page runs against this document. The sitemap one is namespaced on purpose — almost every real XML document is, and that changes which expressions match.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<order id="A-1001" tier="gold">
<customer country="NO">Ada Lovelace</customer>
<!-- priority customer -->
<?audit retained?>
<lines>
<line sku="WIDGET-1" qty="2"><price>14.50</price></line>
<line sku="WIDGET-2" qty="1"><price>39.00</price></line>
<line sku="GIFT-WRAP" qty="1"><price>0.00</price></line>
</lines>
<note> Deliver after 09:00 </note>
</order>Related
- node() testMatches every node kind on an axis: elements, text, comments, processing instructions, and the root node.
- comment() node testSelects XML comment nodes. Their delimiters are syntax; the node's string-value is only the content between them.
- string()Converts anything to a string — and for a node-set, takes only the first node in document order.
- normalize-space()Trims leading and trailing whitespace and collapses internal runs to single spaces — the fix for text that looks equal and is not.
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