xml - R xmlParse() Indexing -

i have data generated xmlparse(). able obtain reference xmlnode called root

> class(root) [1] "xmlinternalelementnode" "xmlinternalnode"        "xmlabstractnode"      

when, do

> root[[2]][[1]] <tr class="party-republican race-winner"><th rowspan="5" class="results-county">autauga <span class="precincts-reporting">100.0% reporting</span></th>&#13;                                 &#13;                                 <th scope="row" class="results-candidate">m. romney</th>&#13;                                 <td class="results-party"><abbr title="republican">gop</abbr></td>&#13;                                 <td class="results-percentage">72.6%</td>&#13;                                 <td class="results-popular">    17,366</td>&#13;                             </tr>  

i try reference value in side tag:

<td class="results-percentage"> 

however doing root[[1]][[2]][["<td class='results-percentage'>]] returns null

what doing wrong prevents me accessing 72.6% value?

you should give valid xpath, :

  //td[@class='results-percentage'] ## preeceeding td , cotaining class 

using data:

library(xml) dd <- xmlparse('<tr class="party-republican race-winner"><th rowspan="5" class="results-county">autauga <span class="precincts-reporting">100.0% reporting</span></th>&#13;   &#13;   <th scope="row" class="results-candidate">m. romney</th>&#13;   <td class="results-party"><abbr title="republican">gop</abbr></td>&#13;   <td class="results-percentage">72.6%</td>&#13;   <td class="results-popular">    17,366</td>&#13;   </tr> ',astext=true) 

then applying xpath

getnodeset(dd, "//td[@class='results-percentage']/text()")[[1]] 72.6%  

or using xpathsapply:

xpathsapply(dd, "//td[@class='results-percentage']",xmlvalue) [1] "72.6%"