XPath to select elements with no children?

Question

<div>
<p> text 1 </p> 
<p>
    <a href="http://www.google.com">text 2</a>
</p> 
<p> text 3  </p> 
<p> text 4 </p> 
</div>

I used this: //p but this also gives me the <p> where text 2 is. I want <p>s without children. I need: text 1, text 3, text 4

Answer 1

Here are XPaths for various interpretations of no children...

• No element children:

  //p[not(*)]
  

• No text children:

  //p[not(text())]
  

• No children of any type:

  //p[not(node())]
  

Replace p above with any other element name, or * to target elements regardless of name.