Text nodes

A text node encapsulates XML character content.

A text node can have zero or one parent. The content of a text node can be empty. However, unless the parent of a text node is empty, the content of the text node cannot be an empty string. Text nodes that are children of a document or element node never appear as adjacent siblings. During document or element node construction, any adjacent siblings are combined into a single text node. If the resulting text node is empty, it is discarded.

Text nodes have the following node properties:

content
parent

For example, suppose that a document has the following textual XML representation:

<product xmlns="http://posample.org" pid="100-101-01"> 
 <description>                                            
   <name>Snow Shovel, Deluxe 24"</name>                    
   <details>A Deluxe Snow Shovel, 24 inches wide, ergonomic
curved handle with D-Grip</details>                                    
   <price>19.99</price>                                    
   <weight>2 kg</weight>                                   
 </description>                                           
</product>

The text node beneath the name element node has the following property values:

Table 1. Properties of the name text node
Node property	Value
content	Snow Shovel, Deluxe 24"
parent	name

The string value of a text node is the content of the node, which in the preceding example is " Snow Shovel, Deluxe 24" ." The typed value of a text node is the same value as type xs:untypedAtomic.