How to select nodes by matching text
Try using this XPath:
p = doc.xpath('//p[//*[contains(text(), "Apple")]]')
You can also do this very easily with Nikkou:
doc.search('p').text_includes('bar')
Nokogiri can do this (now) using jQuery extensions to CSS:
require 'nokogiri'
html = '
<html>
<body>
<p>foo</p>
<p>bar</p>
</body>
</html>
'
doc = Nokogiri::HTML(html)
doc.at('p:contains("bar")').text.strip
=> "bar"
Here is an XPath that works:
require 'nokogiri'
doc = Nokogiri::HTML(DATA)
p doc.xpath('//li[contains(text(), "Apple")]')
__END__
<p>A paragraph <ul><li>Item 1</li><li>Apple</li><li>Orange</li></ul></p>