XPath - Difference between node() and text()

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I'm having trouble understanding the difference between text() and node(). From what I understand, text() would be whatever is in between the tags <item>apple</item> which is apple in this case. Node would be whatever that node actually is, which would be item

But then I've been assigned some work where it asks me to "Select the text of all items under produce" and a separate question asks "Select all the manager nodes in all departments"

How is the output suppose to look text() as opposed to node()

Snippet of XML:

<produce>
 <item>apple</item>
 <item>banana</item>
 <item>pepper</item>
</produce>

<department>
 <phone>123-456-7891</phone>
 <manager>John</manager>
</department>

Of course, there are more departments and more managers, but this was just a snippet of code.

Any help would be much appreciated!

xpath expression xml
2 Answers

For me it was a big difference when I faced this scenario (here my story:)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<sentence id="S1.6">When U937 cells were infected with HIV-1, 
        
    <xcope id="X1.6.3">
        <cue ref="X1.6.3" type="negation">no</cue> 
                        
                        induction of NF-KB factor was detected
        
    </xcope>
                    
, whereas high level of progeny virions was produced, 
        
    <xcope id="X1.6.2">
        <cue ref="X1.6.2" type="speculation">suggesting</cue> that this factor was 
        <xcope id="X1.6.1">
            <cue ref="X1.6.1" type="negation">not</cue> required for viral replication
        </xcope>
    </xcope>.

</sentence>

I needed to extract text between tags and aggregate (by concat) the text including in innner tags.

/node() did the job, while /text() made half job

/text() only returned text not included in inner tags, because inner tags are not "text nodes". You may think, "just extract text included in the inner tags in an additional xpath", however, it becomes challenging to sort the text in this original order because you dont know where to place the aggregated text from the inner tags!because you dont know where to place the aggregated text from the inner nodes.

  1. When U937 cells were infected with HIV-1,
  2. no induction of NF-KB factor was detected
  3. , whereas high level of progeny virions was produced,
  4. suggesting that this factor was not required for viral replication
  5. .

Finally, /node() did exactly what I wanted, because it gets the text from inner tags too.

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