Sometimes giving a bad answer inspires someone else to give a better one,
so here goes:

It seems like the best way to get the contents programatically is using
org-dp (https://github.com/tj64/org-dp). I don't see a way in org-element.

The data returned will include the property drawer of the heading. It does
not include subheadings.

I wrote a quick and ugly function to strip out the property drawer (it also
has to remove the properties list associated with the section element,
hence excluding :begin), and then returns a string.

(defun get-contents (data)
"DATA is the data returned by (org-dp-contents)"
  (let ((contents)
    (exclusions '(property-drawer :begin)))
    (dolist (element (cdar data))
      (unless (memq (car-safe element) exclusions)
    (push element contents)))
    (org-element-interpret-data (reverse contents))))


I am skeptical that this is a better way then the alternative you
described, but do not know. Hopefully someone else can assist.




On Wed, Oct 23, 2019 at 12:10 PM Joost Kremers <joostkremers@fastmail.fm>
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> TIA
>
> Joost
>
>
>
> --
> Joost Kremers
> Life has its moments
>
>