xpath how to extract the href attribute value based on the content? - xpath

<a class="tab-link"> hoho </a>
<a class="tab-link" href="screener.ashx?v=110&s=ta_topgainers&r=41"><b>next</b></a>
<a class="tab-link"> hohaao </a>
I'm working on the scrapy
how can I grap the href attribute value based on the content "next" in xpath?

Check the b element's text inside this way:
//a[b = "next"]/#href
Demo from the Scrapy Shell:
$ cat index.html
<div>
<a class="tab-link"> hoho </a>
<a class="tab-link" href="screener.ashx?v=110&s=ta_topgainers&r=41"><b>next</b></a>
<a class="tab-link"> hohaao </a>
</div>
$ scrapy shell file:////path/to/index.html
>>> response.xpath('//a[b = "next"]/#href').extract_first()
u'screener.ashx?v=110&s=ta_topgainers&r=41'

Related

Proper xpath Syntax for Extracting Two Text Values

I am trying to scrape a web page for NAME OF COMPANY and CITY AND STATE OF COMPANY shown below.
I have an xpath code snippet that identifies both text elements at the same time:
// span[starts-with(#class,"text-align")]/text()[2]
This xpath snippet pulls the first text value (COMPANY NAME). How do I get the second text element (CITY,STATE)?
A snip of the web page code looks like this:
<div>
<ul class="pv-top-card-v3--experience-list">
<li>
<a class="pv-top-card-v3--experience-list-item" href="#" data-control-name="position_see_more" data-ember-action="" data-ember-action-172="172">
<img src="https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/C4E0BAQFhA8h46hvabA/company-logo_100_100/0?e=1582761600&v=beta&t=VAeZqaGu3Lu6Ol_n5kiiI74FSRuSOZA1ggAI5qTVRjE" id="ember173" class="EntityPhoto-square-1 flex-shrink-zero ember-view">
<span id="ember174" class="text-align-left ml2 t-14 t-black t-bold full-width lt-line-clamp lt-line-clamp--multi-line ember-view" style="-webkit-line-clamp: 2"> THIS IS THE NAME OF A COMPANY
<!----></span>
</a>
</li>
<li>
<a class="pv-top-card-v3--experience-list-item" href="#" data-control-name="education_see_more" data-ember-action="" data-ember-action-176="176">
<img src="https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/C560BAQEr2uQX-x2EwQ/company-logo_100_100/0?e=1582761600&v=beta&t=aDbYLUDMvlS4DpwOLjOaQj3Dj60C_cYLC5UUvGoyld0" id="ember177" class="EntityPhoto-square-1 flex-shrink-zero ember-view">
<span id="ember178" class="text-align-left ml2 t-14 t-black t-bold full-width lt-line-clamp lt-line-clamp--multi-line ember-view" style="-webkit-line-clamp: 2"> THIS IS THE CITY AND STATE OF COMPANY
<!----></span>
</a>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
The xpath string is picking up the two span elements using class. I can't use the span id attributes because they are dynamic and change with each page (one page per company).
Can someone advise how I extract the desired text?
Thanks.
point to the li level.
//ul/li[2]/a/span[starts-with(#class,"text-align")]

Extract text inside anchor tag using xpath

I am trying to ascertain how many pages are there for any search result on a site so that i can scrape data for all the pages using lxml and xpath.
There is a pagination tab with the following structure:
Page: 1 2 3 ... 7 next
the html content for the same being something like
<ul class="ulclass">
<li></li>
<li>
<span> You are on the first page</span>
"1"
</li>
<li>
<a href="link to second page">
<span></span>
"2"
</a>
</li>
<li>
</li>
...
<li>
<a href="link to last page">
<span></span>
"7"
</a>
</li>
My approach is to extract the page numbers 1,2,3,7 so that i can repeat the web scraping 7 times for every page 'cause otherwise it just scrapes the first result of the page.
I have written the following xpath, but it doesnot return correct page numbers.
xpath('//ul[#class="ulclass"]/li/a/text())
If I expand your example to form this,
<ul class="ulclass">
<li><span>You are on the first page</span>"1"</li>
<li><span></span>"2"</li>
<li><span></span>"3"</li>
<li><span></span>"4"</li>
<li><span></span>"5"</li>
<li><span></span>"6"</li>
<li><span></span>"7"</li>
</ul>
then using scrapy in Python I can get this:
>>> from scrapy.selector import Selector
>>> selector = Selector(text=open('temp.htm').read())
>>> selector.xpath('..//ul[#class="ulclass"]/li/a/text()').extract()
['"2"', '"3"', '"4"', '"5"', '"6"', '"7"']

xPath expression is not finding text inside HTML

I have following XML:
<div>
<ul>
<li>
<a>
Logout 1
</a>
</li>
<li>
<a>
Logout 2
</a>
</li>
<li>
<a>
Logout 3
</a>
</li>
<li>
<a>
Logout 4
</a>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
And I want to check if a a tag with the text Logout 4exists. I do this with the following expression:
/div/ul/li/a[text() = 'Logout 4']
Which doesnt seem to work, anyone can tell me what I am doing wrong?
I am testing my xPath on this site btw: http://www.xpathtester.com/xpath
Your XPath didn't return any result because the inner text of the a element has leading and trailing spaces, which you can clear using normalize-space() :
/div/ul/li/a[normalize-space() = 'Logout 4']
demo
or, if you really want to evaluate only the first child text node within a :
/div/ul/li/a[normalize-space(text()) = 'Logout 4']

How can I extract URLs from HTML content with a Ruby regexp?

This is an example since it is not easy to explain:
<li id="l_f6a1ok3n4d4p" class="online"> <div class="link"> random strings - 4 <a style="float:left; display:block; padding-top:3px;" href="http://www.webtrackerplus.com/?page=flowplayerregister&a_aid=&a_bid=&chan=flow"><img border="0" src="/resources/img/fdf.gif"></a> <!-- a class="none" href="#">random strings - 4 site2.com - # - </a --> </div> <div class="params"> <span>Submited: </span>7 June 2015 | <span>Host: </span>site2.com </div> <div class="report"> <a title="" href="javascript:report(3191274,%203,%202164691,%201)" class="alert"></a> <a title="" href="javascript:report(3191274,%203,%202164691,%200)" class="work"></a> <b>100% said work</b> </div> <div class="clear"></div> </li> <li id="l_zsgn82c4b96d" class="online"> <div class="link"> <a href="javascript:show('zsgn82c4b96d','random%20strings%204',%20'site1.com');%20" onclick="visited('zsgn82c4b96d');" style
In the above content I want to extract from
javascript:show('f6a1ok3n4d4p','random%20strings%204',%20'site2.com')
the string "f6a1ok3n4d4p" and "site2.com" then make it as
http://site2.com/f6a1ok3n4d4p
and same for
javascript:show('zsgn82c4b96d','random%20strings%204',%20'site1.com')
to become
http://site1.com/zsgn82c4b96d
I need it to be done with Ruby regex.
You can proceed like this:
require 'uri'
str = "javascript:show('f6a1ok3n4d4p','random%20strings%204',%20'site2.com')"
# regex scan to get values within javascript:show
vals = str.scan(/javascript:show\((.*)\)/)[0][0].split(',')
# => ["'f6a1ok3n4d4p'", "'random%20strings%204'", "%20'site2.com'"]
# joining resultant Array elements to generate url
url = "http://" + URI.decode(a.last).tr("'", '').strip + "/" + a.first.tr("'", '')
# => "http://site2.com/f6a1ok3n4d4p"
obviously my answer is not foolproof. You can make it better with checks for what if scan returns []?
This should do the trick, though the regexp isn't particularly flexible.
js_link_regex = /href=\"javascript:show\('([^']+)','[^']+',%20'([^']+)'\)/
link = <<eos
<li id="l_f6a1ok3n4d4p" class="online"> <div class="link"> random strings - 4 <a style="float:left; display:block; padding-top:3px;" href="http://www.webtrackerplus.com/?page=flowplayerregister&a_aid=&a_bid=&chan=flow"><img border="0" src="/resources/img/fdf.gif"></a> <!-- a class="none" href="#">random strings - 4 site2.com - # - </a --> </div> <div class="params"> <span>Submited: </span>7 June 2015 | <span>Host: </span>site2.com </div> <div class="report"> <a title="" href="javascript:report(3191274,%203,%202164691,%201)" class="alert"></a> <a title="" href="javascript:report(3191274,%203,%202164691,%200)" class="work"></a> <b>100% said work</b> </div> <div class="clear"></div> </li> <li id="l_zsgn82c4b96d" class="online"> <div class="link"> <a href="javascript:show('zsgn82c4b96d','random%20strings%204',%20'site1.com');%20" onclick="visited('zsgn82c4b96d');" style
eos
matches = link.scan(js_link_regex)
matches.each do |match|
puts "http://#{match[1]}/#{match[0]}"
end
To just match your case,
str = "javascript:show('f6a1ok3n4d4p','random%20strings%204',%20'site2.com')"
parts = str.scan(/'([\w|\.]+)'/).flatten # => ["f6a1ok3n4d4p", "site2.com"]
puts "http://#{parts[1]}/#{parts[0]}" # => http://site2.com/f6a1ok3n4d4p

Scraping a web page by using XPath

I'm scraping some web pages in order to get some information. I'm using Scrapy and XPath language.
This is an example of page I would get. In the page there are many of this li element
<li ckIgnore="false" codmod="3857" ccar="A" area="NEW" versArea="NEW" shorturl="1" modurl="/auto">
<article>
<img width="210" height="158" src="" alt="" modello=>
<img src="" alt="logo" class="logo-listing" width="38">
<div class="hgroup">
<a href="">
<h5>ABARTH</h5>
<h3>500 cabrio</h3>
</a>
</div>
</article>
</li>
I'm using this syntax to get all the divs which have hgroup class. Unfortunately when I try to print print out models variable this is empty.
def parse(self, response):
sel = Selector(response)
models = sel.xpath("//div[#class='hgroup']/a")
It's possible that what scrapy "sees" is different than what you see on your browser. Try using scrapy shell "http://example.com" and check the response.body if what your looking for is there.

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