How to ignore part of a line?

[dtrezubSV]

I am using the subscription version, and I am monitoring changes to the source code for my Wordpress website.

Because of caching plugins, some elements are rendered with versioning, like id=html5_[randomString].

While I know I can ignore the entire line where those elements occur, I would like to know if there is a way to remove those elements from the line, before triggering a change, because I would be interested in knowing if something else changed on those lines.

So, for example, if I have a line that reads
<div id="html5_eywqueywquieywq"><p>This is a div</p></div>
I would like to keep
<div id="html5_"><p>This is a div</p></div>
and use this as output for the change triggers and comparisons.

Is it possible?
Basically, I realize I am asking for the opposite of what "Extract text" does :)

Thanks!

[dtrezubSV]

@dgtlmoon would you have any insights? :)

[dgtlmoon]

can you use the text output?

[dtrezubSV]

Thanks for replying.

I am not sure I understand what you mean.

[dgtlmoon]

1.5 seconds of ChatGPT..

You can use the XPath starts-with function to match any id attribute that begins with "html5_":

//div[starts-with(@id, 'html5_')]

This will select any <div> element whose id starts with "html5_". If you need to modify the id itself to remove extra characters, you would have to do that separately in your processing logic.

is that what you want?

[dgtlmoon]

why didnt you just write this to start with? this is quite different to your first request and i wouldnt have spent time to come up with that xpath for you.

[dtrezubSV]

You're absolutely right—I should have been clearer from the start. I really appreciate the time you took to help with the XPath, and I didn’t mean to waste any of it. My understanding of the issue evolved as you asked questions, and I realize now that my initial explanation wasn’t precise enough.

Also, just to clarify, the various examples I provided were meant to illustrate the issue and not as definitive requirements to be taken literally. I was just trying to make things clearer, but I see now how that might have caused confusion.

Thanks again for your help, and I’ll make sure to be clearer in the future!

[dtrezubSV]

Here's yet another EXAMPLE/USE CASE for my request:

It would be great it I could ignore ONLY the "dateModified" parameter.

[dgtlmoon]

So you're using that JSON in rank-math-schema for something?

[dtrezubSV]

Yes, I use the JSON output, but I don't want to discard the entire line. I need to monitor it for meaningful changes. However, dateModified is not meaningful in this context because it updates every time anything in the plugin changes, which would create unnecessary triggers.

The examples I’m providing are just illustrations of the main issue, not individual problems that need to be solved on their own. They highlight a recurring pattern rather than isolated cases. The goal is to address the broader issue, not to focus on fixing each specific example.