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Question using XPath to look for a sibling of a td with a certain name

I am trying to get the value after the "<"strong">" - Tag ("TGCTGCTGC") out of a XML-file using "XPath". The query "//dns:table/dns:tbody//dns:tr/dns:td[contains(text(), 'genomic')]" gives the output "genomic-sequence", so far so good. However If I try to access the second "td", e.g. by writing "//dns:table/dns:tbody//dns:tr/dns:td[contains(text(), 'genomic')]/following-sibling::td[1]" or "//dns:table/dns:tbody//dns:tr/dns:td[contains(text(), 'genomic')]/following-sibling::td[2]" it never works. Below the xml-code:

"<tr>
     <td style="text-align:right;">genomic-sequence</td>
     <td>
        <div style="overflow: auto; overflow-y: hidden;">                                     
            <strong>TGCTGCTGC</strong>
        </div>
     </td>
 </tr>"

Thanks for your help!

I tried:

Works: "//dns:table/dns:tbody//dns:tr/dns:td[contains(text(), 'genomic')]" --> gives output "genomic-sequence"

Does not work: "//dns:table/dns:tbody//dns:tr/dns:td[contains(text(), 'genomic')]/following-sibling::td[1]" and "//dns:table/dns:tbody//dns:tr/dns:td[contains(text(), 'genomic')]/following-sibling::td[2]"

Solution

  • You need to specify the namespace for every element, even when using the following-sibling axis:

    following-sibling::dns:td
                   ~~~~