How to match ancestor-or-self for contains Xpath?

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I try to match ancestor-or-self of any element containing certain text string:

In step 1 matching of elements containing text works: //*[contains(text(),"ABC")].

But I struggle with the syntax of adding an ancestor. I tried //*ancestor-or-self::[contains(text(),"ABC")] and //*[contains(text(),"ABC")]/ancestor-or-self without success.

What is the correct syntax for this?

The code and string I want match can look like:

<p><strong>Vertreten durch:</strong><br>Max Mustermann</p>

So I look for the string Vertreten durch to catch the parent element <p>...</p>

  • Can you add your XML (or a smaller version of it), with the output of the XPATH expression that your are searching for ?

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  • Or take a look at: Difference between ancestor and ancestor-or-self

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  • @Luuk: example added

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I created an example xml, and named it test.xml:

<root>
   <line1>
       <line11>A</line11>
       <line12>B</line12>
   </line1>
   <line2>
       <line21>C</line21>
       <line22>D</line22>
   </line2>
</root>

Using xmlstarlet, you can do:

D:\TEMP>xml sel -t -m "//*[contains(text(),'D')]/ancestor-or-self::*" -v "name()" -n test.xml
root
line2
line22

D:\TEMP>xml sel -t -m "//*[contains(text(),'A')]/ancestor-or-self::*" -v "name()" -n test.xml
root
line1
line11

D:\TEMP>xml sel -C -t -m "//*[contains(text(),'A')]/ancestor-or-self::*" -v "name()" -n test.xml
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:exslt="http://exslt.org/common" version="1.0" extension-element-prefixes="exslt">
  <xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="no"/>
  <xsl:template match="/">
    <xsl:for-each select="//*[contains(text(),'A')]/ancestor-or-self::*">
      <xsl:call-template name="value-of-template">
        <xsl:with-param name="select" select="name()"/>
      </xsl:call-template>
      <xsl:value-of select="'&#10;'"/>
    </xsl:for-each>
  </xsl:template>
  <xsl:template name="value-of-template">
    <xsl:param name="select"/>
    <xsl:value-of select="$select"/>
    <xsl:for-each select="exslt:node-set($select)[position()&gt;1]">
      <xsl:value-of select="'&#10;'"/>
      <xsl:value-of select="."/>
    </xsl:for-each>
  </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

D:\TEMP>

EDIT: With a minimum example from HTML (I made sure it is also valid XML):

D:\TEMP>type test.html
<html>
<head>
   <title>test</title>
</head>
<body>
   <p><strong>Vertreten durch:</strong><br />Max Mustermann</p>
</body>
</html>
D:\TEMP>xml sel -t -m //*[contains(text(),'Vertreten')] -c .. -n test.html
<p><strong>Vertreten durch:</strong><br/>Max Mustermann</p>

D:\TEMP>xml sel -C -t -m //*[contains(text(),'Vertreten')] -c .. -n test.html
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">
  <xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="no"/>
  <xsl:template match="/">
    <xsl:for-each select="//*[contains(text(),'Vertreten')]">
      <xsl:copy-of select=".."/>
      <xsl:value-of select="'&#10;'"/>
    </xsl:for-each>
  </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Don’t try to process text nodes; use the string value of elements instead.

If the string value of an element E contains the substring Vertreten durch:, then the string value of all ancestors of E also contains this substring. So I think you simply need

//*[contains(., 'Vertreten durch:')]

If that doesn’t answer the question, then the question needs to be clearer. An example would help.

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