Lxml Xpath Expression For Selecting All Text Under A Given Child Node Including His Children

Provided I have a XML as follows:

Solution 1:

Try using either string() or normalize-space()...

from lxml import etree

XML_content = """
<node1>
    <text title='book'>
       <div chapter='0'>
          <div id='theNode'>
              <p xml:id="x40">
               A House that has:
                   <p xml:id="x45">- a window;</p>
                   <p xml:id="x46">- a door</p>
                   <p xml:id="x47">- a door</p>
               its a beuatiful house
               </p>
          </div>
       </div>
    </text>
</node1>
"""

XML_tree = etree.fromstring(XML_content)
text = XML_tree.xpath('string(//text[@title="book"]/div/div/p)')
# text = XML_tree.xpath('normalize-space(//text[@title="book"]/div/div/p)')print(text)

Output using string()...

               A House that has:
                   - a window;
                   - a door
                   - a door
               its a beuatiful house

Output using normalize-space()...

A House that has: - a window; - a door - a door its a beuatiful house

Solution 2:

Another option :

XML_tree = etree.fromstring(XML_content)
text = [el.strip() for el in XML_tree.xpath('//text()[ancestor::text[@title="book"]][normalize-space()]')]
print(" ".join(text))
print("\n".join(text))

Output :

A House that has: - a window; - a door - a door its a beuatiful house
A House that has:
- a window;
- a door
- a door
its a beuatiful house

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