I have a follow-up question for this question: Groovy XmlSlurper get value of the node without children.
It explains that in order to get the local inner text of a (HTML) node without recursively get the nested text of potential inner child nodes as well, one has to use #localText() instead of #text().
For instance, a slightly enhanced example from the original question:
<html>
<body>
<div>
Text I would like to get1.
<a href="http://intro.com">extra stuff</a>
Text I would like to get2.
<a href="http://example.com">link to example</a>
Text I would like to get3.
</div>
<span>
<a href="http://intro.com">extra stuff</a>
Text I would like to get2.
<a href="http://example.com">link to example</a>
Text I would like to get3.
</span>
</body>
</html>
with the solution applied:
def tagsoupParser = new org.ccil.cowan.tagsoup.Parser()
def slurper = new XmlSlurper(tagsoupParser)
def htmlParsed = slurper.parseText(stringToParse)
println htmlParsed.body.div[0].localText()[0]
would return:
[Text I would like to get1., Text I would like to get2., Text I would like to get3.]
However, when parsing the <span> part in this example
println htmlParsed.body.span[0].localText()
the output is
[Text I would like to get2., Text I would like to get3.]
The problem I am facing now is that it's apparently not possible to pinpoint the location ("between which child nodes") of the texts. I would have expected the second invocation to yield
[, Text I would like to get2., Text I would like to get3.]
This would have made it clear: Position 0 (before child 0) is empty, position 1 (between child 0 and 1) is "Text I would like to get2.", and position 2 (between child 1 and 2) is "Text I would like to get3." But given the API works as it does, there is apparently no way to determine whether the text returned at index 0 is actually positioned at index 0 or at any other index, and the same is true for all the other indices.
I have tried it with both XmlSlurper and XmlParser, yielding the same results.
If I'm not mistaken here, it's as a consequence also impossible to completely recreate an original HTML document using the information from the parser because this "text index" information is lost.
My question is: Is there any way to find out those text positions? An answer requiring me to change the parser would also be acceptable.
UPDATE / SOLUTION:
For further reference, here's Will P's answer, applied to the original code:
def tagsoupParser = new org.ccil.cowan.tagsoup.Parser()
def slurper = new XmlParser(tagsoupParser)
def htmlParsed = slurper.parseText(stringToParse)
println htmlParsed.body.div[0].children().collect {it in String ? it : null}
This yields:
[Text I would like to get1., null, Text I would like to get2., null, Text I would like to get3.]
One has to use XmlParser instead of XmlSlurper with node.children().
I don't know jsoup, and i hope it is not interfering with the solution, but with a pure XmlParser you can get an array of children() which contains the raw string:
html = '''<html>
<body>
<div>
Text I would like to get1.
<a href="http://intro.com">extra stuff</a>
Text I would like to get2.
<a href="http://example.com">link to example</a>
Text I would like to get3.
</div>
<span>
<a href="http://intro.com">extra stuff</a>
Text I would like to get2.
<a href="http://example.com">link to example</a>
Text I would like to get3.
</span>
</body>
</html>'''
def root = new XmlParser().parseText html
root.body.div[0].children().with {
assert get(0).trim() == 'Text I would like to get1.'
assert get(0).getClass() == String
assert get(1).name() == 'a'
assert get(1).getClass() == Node
assert get(2) == '''
Text I would like to get2.
'''
}