Optimal XPath Query for processing the sample HTML fragment - xpath

I have a feed that outputs HTML. The following segment is part of the output
<div class="leftnav">
<table border="0" cols="2">
<tr>
<td colspan="2" class="topline"><span style="font-size: 1px"> </span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2"><span class="bold">Article Cat1 </span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="date" colspan="2">
ArticleTitle1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="20"></td>
<td class="date">
ArticleLink1
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2" class="topline"><span style="font-size: 1px"> </span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2"><span class="bold">Article Cat2 </span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="date" colspan="2">
ArticleTitle2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="20"></td>
<td class="date">
ArticleLink2
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</div>
I want to process above segment using XPATH so that output looks like this
Article Cat1
ArticleTitle1
ArticleLink1 Article Cat2
ArticleTitle2
ArticleLink2
What is the optimal XPATH that will produce the desired output? I tried //div[#class="leftnav"]/table/tr but this gives all the TR elements. I want to skip the first TR element so that I can get the output in the format I described above.

//div[#class="leftnav"]/table/tr[position() > 1]
Try the above

Stupid simple way:
substring-after(normalize-space(string(//*:div)), normalize-space(string(//*:div/*:table/*[1])))
Result: "Article Cat1 ArticleTitle1 ArticleLink1 nbsp Article Cat2 ArticleTitle2 ArticleLink2"
I don't know why, but (position() > 1) doesn't work in my environment, so I've used strings instead.

Related

Why Xpath 3.0 works, but Xquery 3.0 doesn't work with the same expression

I launched Xpath in Oxygen. In Xpath 3.0 found what i need but in Xquery 3.0 doesn't find.
This is my Xpath expression
//table[tbody/tr/th/p[contains(text(), 'All Water System Contacts')]]/tbody/tr[3]/td[1]
This is my xml code
I put part code.
<table border="1" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" summary="." width="640">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th colspan="3">
<p>All Water System Contacts </p></th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Type</th>
<th>Contact</th>
<th>Communication</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center">AC - Administrative Contact - GENERAL MANAGER </td>
<td align="center">GRANT, JOHN, W <br/> PO BOX 869<br/> BIG SPRING, TX 79721-0869 </td>
<td align="center">
<table border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse"
width="100%">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><b>Electronic Type</b></th>
<th><b>Value</b></th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse"
width="100%">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><b>Phone Type</b></th>
<th><b>Value</b></th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center">BUS - Business</td>
<td align="center">432-267-6341 </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center">FAX - Facsimile</td>
<td align="center">432-267-3121 </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center">BUS - Business</td>
<td align="center">432-267-6070 </td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center">OW - Owner </td>
<td align="center">COLORADO RIVER MUNICIPAL WATER DISTRICT <br/> PO BOX 869<br/> BIG
SPRING, TX 79721-0869 </td>
<td align="center"> </td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
I tried different functions.
I don't know why it doesn't work and what difference
Please help me.
I suspect your real, complete input has an XHTML default namespace declaration xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" and in oXygen for XPath you have the setting enabled to "use the default namespace of the root element" so your path works with XPath out of the box while for XQuery you need to make sure you explicitly set
declare default element namespace 'http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml';
in the prolog of your XQuery file or code sample.

Mailchimp edit table cell background color

Is there any logical way to change the background colour for a table cell in a repeatable region in mailchimp? Here is my code, I don't see any options in mailchimp with the custom template build.
<table width="100%" cellspacing="20" mc:repeatable="product" mc:variant="content1">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#ff0000" valign="middle" mc:edit="playlist"><h2>Playlist</h2>
<h3>Check out this playlist!</h3>
<h4>FOLLOW</h4></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
I came across a similar issue today. Here's a possible solution:
<table width="100%" cellspacing="20" mc:repeatable="product" mc:variant="red">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#ff0000" valign="middle" mc:edit="playlist">
<h2>Playlist</h2>
<h3>Check out this playlist!</h3>
<h4>FOLLOW</h4>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table width="100%" cellspacing="20" mc:repeatable="product" mc:variant="green">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#00ff00" valign="middle" mc:edit="playlist">
<h2>Playlist</h2>
<h3>Check out this playlist!</h3>
<h4>FOLLOW</h4>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table width="100%" cellspacing="20" mc:repeatable="product" mc:variant="blue">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td align="center" bgcolor="#0000ff" valign="middle" mc:edit="playlist">
<h2>Playlist</h2>
<h3>Check out this playlist!</h3>
<h4>FOLLOW</h4>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
When you've imported this into your template, create a campaign and on the design page you'll have a dropdown with the different colour options. Make any h2s, h3s etc editable by adding mc:edit.

Trying to find XPath for multiple TDs

I want to extract the Address for specific Numbers (the first TD) of this table. The only unique identifier for the table is the H3.
Here is the code for the table:
<table width="95%" cellpadding=5 cellspacing=0 border=1>
<tr><td colspan="4"><h3>The list</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>Number</td><td>First Name</td>
<td>Last Name</td><td>Address</td>
</tr>
I have tried:
//table[#h3=’See this now’]/’tr/td[87] and td[107] and td[116]
I am new to xpath, and programming in general. It's pretty fun, but would love to be able to figure this one out!! Appreciate any help :D
First, your HTML is wrong.
You did not close your Table element.
You did not close your H3 element.
You must enclose your attributes in quotes.
<table width="95%" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" border="1">
<tr>
<td colspan="4">
<h3>The list</h3>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Number</td>
<td>First Name</td>
<td>Last Name</td>
<td>Address</td>
</tr>
</table>
Once you have fixed the formatting of your XHTML. You can traverse the document tree.
XPATH
Any table, with any td that has a h3.
//table//td/h3
Will return
<h3>The list</h3>
For the number
//table//tr[2]/td[1] <-- any table, the second tr element in this table, the first td in that second tr
Will return
<td>Number</td>
So if we add multiple tables to a document and you want to find multiple results for each element in any table, this is quite simple. Say we have a XHTML document with many tables inside a parent element, for example 'root' element.
<root>
<table width="95%" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" border="1">
<tr>
<td colspan="4">
<h3>The list</h3>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>123</td>
<td>First Name</td>
<td>Last Name</td>
<td>Address</td>
</tr>
</table>
<table width="95%" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" border="1">
<tr>
<td colspan="4">
<h3>The list</h3>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>456</td>
<td>First Name</td>
<td>Last Name</td>
<td>Address</td>
</tr>
</table>
<table width="95%" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" border="1">
<tr>
<td colspan="4">
<h3>The list</h3>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>789</td>
<td>First Name</td>
<td>Last Name</td>
<td>Address</td>
</tr>
</table>
</root>
We can extract the number of the first table data in each second row in every table using the following XPATH expression:
//table/tr[2]/td[1]
This will give us the result of
<td>123</td>
-----------------------
<td>456</td>
-----------------------
<td>789</td>
Now, say we have several tables, but only one table is very important to us, the table must have a H3 element, no other element is important to us, and if this table has a H3 element, we want to extract the second rows first td.
<root>
<table width="95%" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" border="1">
<tr>
<td colspan="4">
<h4>Ignore me!</h4>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>1164961564896</td>
<td>First Name</td>
<td>Last Name</td>
<td>Address</td>
</tr>
</table>
<table width="95%" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" border="1">
<tr>
<td colspan="4">
<h1>I'm not interesting</h1>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>456456466465</td>
<td>First Name</td>
<td>Last Name</td>
<td>Address</td>
</tr>
</table>
<table width="95%" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" border="1">
<tr>
<td colspan="4">
<h3>IM THE IMPORTANT TABLE!</h3>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>123456789</td>
<td>First Name</td>
<td>Last Name</td>
<td>Address</td>
</tr>
</table>
</root>
We can acomplish this by traversing back up the tree if we are successful in finding the H3 element, then go to the next tr.
//table//h3/../../../tr/td[1]
Will return
<td colspan="4">
<h3>IM THE IMPORTANT TABLE!</h3>
</td>
-----------------------
<td>123456789</td>

Need query for XPath that finds all <tr> elements that contain 7 <td> elements

Hello and hopefully thanks for the help.
Honestly I am not very experienced at XPath and I am hoping a guru out there will have a quick answer for me.
I am scraping a web page for data. The defining aspect of the data I want is that it is contained in a row <tr> that has 7 <td> elements. Each <td> element has one of the pieces of data I need to import. I am using the HTML Agility Pack on CodePlex to grab the data, but I can't seem to figure out how to define the query.
Contained in the web page is a section like this:
<table border="0" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1" width="100%">
<tr class="bgWhite" xmlns:msxsl="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt">
<td class="dataHdrText02" valign="top" width="50" align="center"><nobr>SYMBOL</nobr></td>
<td class="dataHdrText02" valign="top" align="center">PERIOD</td>
<td class="dataHdrText02" valign="top" align="center" width="*">EVENT TITLE</td>
<td class="dataHdrText02" valign="top" align="center">EPS ESTIMATE</td>
<td class="dataHdrText02" valign="top" align="center">EPS ACTUAL</td>
<td class="dataHdrText02" valign="top" align="center">PREV. YEAR ACTUAL</td>
<td class="dataHdrText02" valign="top" align="center"><nobr>DATE/TIME (ET)</nobr></td>
</tr>
<tr class="bgWhite">
<td align="center" width="50"><nobr>CSCO </nobr></td>
<td align="center">Q4 2011</td>
<td align="left" width="*">Q4 2011 CISCO Systems Inc Earnings Release</td>
<td align="center">$ 0.38 </td>
<td align="center">n/a </td>
<td align="center">$ 0.43 </td>
<td align="center"><nobr>10-Aug-11</nobr></td>
</tr>
<tr class="bgWhite">
<td align="center" width="50"><nobr>CSCO  </nobr></td>
<td align="center">Q3 2011</td>
<td align="left" width="*">Q3 2011 Cisco Systems Earnings Release</td>
<td align="center">$ 0.37 </td>
<td align="center">$ 0.42 </td>
<td align="center">$ 0.42 </td>
<td align="center"><nobr>11-May-11 AMC</nobr></td>
</tr>
<tr class="bgWhite" xmlns:msxsl="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt">
<td align="center" colspan="7"><img src="/format/cb/images/spacer.gif" width="1" height="4"></td>
</tr>
</table>
My goal is to grab the earnings event data and place it into a database for analysis. My original thought was to grab all <tr> elements with 7 <td> elements then work with that data. Any advice or alternative suggestions would be welcome.
This should do it for you.
//tr[count(td)=7]

Finding table values in watij using xpath

I am using watij to automate my UI testing. I have many tables in a webpage. I need to find a table which has a width 95%. It contains many rows. I have to find each row with different text say "running first UI test on local" as below adn need to get the td value "Complete". I am not ble to get the value but I get the watij address. Let me know how I can find this.
<table width=95%>
<tr>
<th align="left">
<span id="lblHeaderComponent" style="font-size:10pt;font-weight:bold;">Component</span>
</th>
<th align="left">
<span id="lblHeaderServer" style="font-size:10pt;font-weight:bold;">Server</span>
</th>
<th align="left">
<span id="lblHeaderStatus" style="font-size:10pt;font-weight:bold;">
</span>
</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left"
nowrap="nowrap" style="font-size:12px;">running first UI test on local</td>
<td align="left" style="font-size:12px;">Google</td>
<td align="left" style="font-size:12px;">
<a style='color:#336600;'>Complete</a>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left"
style="border-top:1px solid #cfcfcf;border-bottom:1px solid #cfcfcf;"
colspan="3"
style="font-size:12px; color:#ff3300;">
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left" nowrap="nowrap" style="font-size:12px;">running second UI test on local</td>
<td align="left" style="font-size:12px;">Google</td>
<td align="left" style="font-size:12px;">
<a style='color:#336600;'>Complete</a>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
You can try an xpath visualizer like this one to assist you in getting the right expression. It lets you see the results visually.
Using XPath on HTML assumes the HTML is XHTML - in other words it must be well-formed XML.

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