xpath - how to get text from node in Quora?

Question

I have copied the xpath Chrome returns for a certain node

//*[@id="__w2_cEfEsuQ_list_item"]/div/div[2]/div/div[1]/div[2]/a[1]

Executing this in the console of Chrome returns

[a]
    0: a
    length: 1
    __proto__: Array(0)

0 can be expanded and contains a lot of subnodes (I removed most of them because SO complained about too much code in my question), like this:

accessKey: ""
tagName: "A"
target: ""
text: "38 Answers"
textContent: "38 Answers"
title: ""
translate: true
type: ""
username: ""

I want an xpath that returns the textContent and text nodes. I have tried different variations on //*[@id="__w2_cEfEsuQ_list_item"]/div/div[2]/div/div[1]/div[2]/a[1]/text() but none has worked. How do I do?

IIRC this is only possible using XPath-2.0. If you're stuck with XPath-1.0, you're out of luck this way. — zx485, Sep 24 '18 at 19:29
What version of Xpath is supported by the console in Chrome? — , Sep 25 '18 at 06:11

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 26 '18 at 06:36

The Chrome console features indeed only XPath 1.0.
Nonetheless, getting the text() should work as expected.

To Run XPath queries on the current page directly from Chrome's console,

Open the console (F12, cmd-opt-J on a Mac), then
placing your query inside $x("") and run it.

If you want to print all text elements found by the locator in the console (or do other stuff) just call .forEach

$x('//*[@id="__w2_cEfEsuQ_list_item"]/div/div[2]/div/div[1]/div[2]/a[1]/text()').forEach(function (item) {
    console.log(item);});

or access the elements of the result array directly using the index $x("//p/text()")[0]

xpath - how to get text from node in Quora?

1 Answers1