Re: [O] Get the text of a node

[Sebastian Miele]

Joost Kremers <address@hidden> writes:

> I was wondering if there's a way to programmatically get the text of a
> node in an Org buffer. Basically, I have a buffer that looks something
> like this:
>
> #+BEGIN_SRC org
> * Top header
> ** Subheader
>   :PROPERTIES:
>   :Custom_ID: some_id
>   :END:
>
>   Text starts here, possibly with additional subheaders
> #+END_SRC
>
> What I would like to extract is the text below "Subheader", but
> without the :PROPERTIES: block.
>
> I've looked at the org-element library, but I haven't been able to
> figure out how to use it to extract just the plain text.

You probably are not aware of dev/org-element-api.org in Worg, yet. It
is a very good introduction to and systematic overview of the element
api. It is not mentioned at the top of org-element.el.

> I use the :Custom_ID: property to find the relevant subheading and I
> know I can use (org-back-to-heading) to get point to the Subheader
> containing the relevant :PROPERTIES: block. Obviously, I could then
> narrow the buffer to the subheader, use a text search to move point
> past the line containing :END: and then extract the text from there
> until (point-max).
>
> I'm just wondering if this may break in unexpected circumstances and
> whether there's a better way.

A robust way that I see is the following. The first two steps may be
optional. Or they could be expanded slightly in order to even exclude
possible subheadings from the work of org-element-parse-buffer in the
last step.

1. Call org-element-at-point on the heading. The resulting element has
:begin and :end properties. They contain the buffer positions of the
beginning of the headline and the end of everything that belongs to the
headline, including paragraphs and subheadings.

2. Call narrow-to-region on those positions.

3. Call org-element-parse-buffer.

See dev/org-element-api.org for what that returns and why that works.

Best wishes
Sebastian