to get selective content using xpath - xpath

Question

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Chemistry In-House Symposium 2014 (CiHS-2014)
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In 2011, Chemistry In-House Symposium (CiHS) was initiated as department yearly event on the occasion of the International Year of Chemistry and Golden Jubilee Year of the Department. The theme of the CiHS is to provide the platform for the deliberation of exciting research findings and mutual exchange of ideas within the Department. This yearly event, in addition, is expected to provide an opportunity for further enhancing the collaborative research within the department. This year, the CiHS will be organized on the Wednesday, August 13, 2014 at IC & SR auditorium, IIT Madras.
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<strong>Venue:</strong>
IC & SR auditorium, IIT Madras
<br>
<strong>Dates:</strong>
Aug 13, 2014 to Aug 13, 2014
<br>
<strong>Coordinator(s):</strong>
Ramesh Gardas
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I need to write an xpath for the above script in which i should be able to get only the text of 'a' tag,dates and venue. I do not want the entire description.Is there any way we can get only selective text using the xpath=> //div[#class='block-inner clearfix']/ul/li//text()

Answer 1

To get the text within the a element you can simply execute
//div[#class='block-inner clearfix']/ul/li/a/text()
To get the text, which immediately follows the specified <strong/> element you can use the following XPath:
//div[#class='block-inner clearfix']/ul/li/text()[preceding-sibling::strong = "Dates:"][1]
To get the venue, use respectively
//div[#class='block-inner clearfix']/ul/li/text()[preceding-sibling::strong = "Venue:"][1]