Java – XPath normalize space() returns a series of normalized strings

I need to use the XPath function normalized space () to normalize the text I want to extract from the X HTML document: http://test.anahnarciso.com/clean_bigbook_0.html

I am using the following expression:

//*[@slot="address"]/normalize-space(.)

This is very effective in qizx studio, which I use to test XPath expressions

let $doc := doc('http://test.anahnarciso.com/clean_bigbook_0.html')
    return $doc//*[@slot="address"]/normalize-space(.)

This simple query returns a series of XS: string

144 Hempstead Tpke
403 West St
880 Old Country Rd
8412 164th St
8412 164th St
1 Irving Pl
1622 McDonald Ave
255 Conklin Ave
22011 Hempstead Ave
7909 Queens Blvd
11820 Queens Blvd
1027 Atlantic Ave
1068 Utica Ave
1002 Clintonville St
1002 Clintonville St
1156 Hempstead Tpke
Route 49
10007 Rockaway Blvd
12694 Willets Point Blvd
343 James St

Now, I want to use the previous expression in my java code

String exp = "//*[@slot=\"address"\"]/normalize-space(.)";
XPath xpath = XPathFactory.newInstance().newXPath();
XPathExpression expr = xpath.compile(exp);
Object result = expr.evaluate(doc,XPathConstants.NODESET);

But the last line throws an exception:

Cannot convert XPath value to Java object: the required class is org. XML w3c. dom. NodeList; The supplied value has the type XS: string

Obviously, I should change xpathconstants NODESET; I tried xpathconstants String, but it only returns the first element of the sequence

How can I get something like strings array?

Thank you in advance

Solution

Your expression is valid in XPath 2.0, but illegal in XPath 1.0 (used in Java) – it should be normalize space (/ / * [@ slot = 'address')

In any case, in XPath 1.0, when normalize space () is called on a node set, only the first node (in document order) is taken

In order to do what you want to do, you need to use an XPath 2.0 compatible parser, or traverse the result node set and call normalize space() on each node:

XPath xpath = XPathFactory.newInstance().newXPath();
XPathExpression expr;

String select = "//*[@slot='address']";
expr = xpath.compile(select);
NodeList result = (NodeList)expr.evaluate(input,XPathConstants.NODESET);

String normalize = "normalize-space(.)";
expr = xpath.compile(normalize);

int length = result.getLength();
for (int i = 0; i < length; i++) {
    System.out.println(expr.evaluate(result.item(i),XPathConstants.STRING));
}

... output completely given output