I am trying to quickly find a specific node using XPath but it seems my multiple predicates are not working. The div I need has a specific class, but there are 3 others that have it. I want to select the fourth one so I did the following:
//div[#class='myCLass' and 4]
However the "4" is being ignored. Any help? I am new to XPath.
Thanks.
If a xpath query returns a node set you can always use the [OFFSET] operator to access a certain element of it.
Use the following query to access the fourth element that matches the #class='myClass' predicate:
//div[#class='myCLass'][4]
#WilliamNarmontas answer might be an alternative to the syntax showed above.
Alternatively,
//div[#class='myCLass' and position()=4]
The accepted answer works correctly only if all of the div elements have the same parent. Otherwise use:
(//div[#class='myCLass'])[4]
Related
I am trying to write an XPath expression which can return the URL associated with the next page of a search.
The URL which leads to the next page of the search is always the href in the a tag following the tag span class="navCurrentPage" I have been trying to use a following-sibling term to pull the next URL. My search in the Chrome console is:
$x('//span[#class="navCurrentPage"][1]/following-sibling::a/#href[1]')
I thought by specifying #href[1] I would only get back one URL (thinking the [1] chooses the first element in list), but instead Chrome (and Scrapy) are returning four URLs. I don't understand why. Please help me to understand how to select the one URL that I am looking for.
Here is the URL where you can find the HTML giving me trouble:
https://www.yachtworld.com/core/listing/cache/searchResults.jsp?cit=true&slim=quick&ybw=&sm=3&searchtype=advancedsearch&Ntk=boatsEN&Ntt=&is=false&man=&hmid=102&ftid=101&enid=0&type=%28Sail%29&fromLength=35&toLength=50&fromYear=1985&toYear=2010&fromPrice=&toPrice=&luom=126¤cyid=100&city=&rid=100&rid=101&rid=104&rid=105&rid=107&rid=108&rid=112&rid=114&rid=115&rid=116&rid=128&rid=130&rid=153&pbsint=&boatsAddedSelected=-1
Thank you for the help.
Operator precedence: //x[1] means /descendant-or-self::node()/child::x[1] which finds every descendant x that is the first child of its parent. You want (//x)[1] which finds the first node among all the descendants named x.
xpath index will apply on all matching records, if you want to get only the first item, get the first instance.
$x('//span[#class="navCurrentPage"][1]/following-sibling::a/#href[1]').extract_first()
just add, .extract_first() or .get() to fetch the first item.
see the scrapy documentation here.
I've found this very helpful to make sure you have the bracket in the right place.
What is the XPath expression to find only the first occurrence?
also, the first occurrence may be [0] not [1]
I am using this XPath query succesfully:
//div[(#class="result")]//a[contains(#href,"pinterest.com")]/#href
The URL I am using the XPath query (with simple_html_dom.php) is this one here.
Now, I would like to find results for pinterest.com/one-folder-deep-only and exclude all URLs deeper than one directory, like pinterest.com/one-folder-deep-only/this or pinterest.com/one-folder-deep-only/this/this. I have no idea if there is a way to achieve that. Have googled a lot, but not found anything. Maybe my search terms weren't the best.
Do you have any ideas? Thanks for helping me here.
I am testing the query using the Chrome XPath Helper.
"//" is to evaluate all levels/depths. Instead use only one "/" for the "a" query to only evaluate immediate children
//div[(#id="first-result")]/a[contains(#href,"url.com")]/#href
Note use of / instead of // before the "a" tag.
Try below XPath to select #href from required anchors only:
//a[contains(#href, "url.com") and not(contains(substring-after(./#href, 'url.com/'), "/"))]/#href
Solution for XPath 2.0:
//a[contains(#href, "url.com") and count(tokenize(#href, "/"))=2]/#href
Note that if in real HTML source href starts-with "http://url.com" you should specify =4 instead of =2
On this page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_Seven#Episode_list
I have:
//*[text()='Reception']//preceding::th[contains(#id, 'ep')]//following::I
But it only registers following.
The default firepath selector is: .//*[#id='mw-content-text']/div/table[5]/tbody/tr/td[1]/I but this kind of selector is known to break quite frequently. Just wondering if there is a better way of doing this and I thought this might be a way.
Thanks!
:)
- You can see that it's getting stuff under the table which is not what I want :S
Try to use below XPath to match required elements:
//th[contains(#id, 'ep')]/following::I[./following::*[text()='Reception']]
This looks more simple
//tr[contains(#class, 'vevent')]//i
Don't overcomplicate things. You need I tag inside each row. So just find row locator tr[contains(#class, 'vevent')] and get it's I
Another good approach in case you want to check that inside of parent element is located some special element, but you want to find some 3rd element is to use such style: //element[./specific]//child , so in your case:
//tr[contains(#class, 'vevent')][./th[contains(#id,'ep')]]//i
so it's I tag inside row that contains #id,'ep' in header
I try to write xpath expressions so that my tests won't be broken by small design changes. So instead of the expressions that Selenium IDE generates, I write my own.
Here's an issue:
//input[#name='question'][7]
This expression doesn't work at all. Input nodes named 'question' are spread across the page. They're not siblings.
I've tried using intermediate expression, but it also fails.
(//input[#name='question'])[2]
error = Error: Element (//input[#name='question'])[2] not found
That's why I suppose Seleniun has a wrong implementation of XPath.
According to XPath docs, the position predicate must filter by the position in the nodeset, so it must find the seventh input with the name 'question'. In Selenium this doesn't work. CSS selectors (:nth-of-kind) neither.
I had to write an expression that filters their common parents:
//*[contains(#class, 'question_section')][7]//input[#name='question']
Is this a Selenium specific issue, or I'm reading the specs wrong way? What can I do to make a shorter expression?
Here's an issue:
//input[#name='question'][7]
This expression doesn't work at all.
This is a FAQ.
[] has a higher priority than //.
The above expression selects every input element with #name = 'question', which is the 7th child of its parent -- and aparently the parents of input elements in the document that is not shown don't have so many input children.
Use (note the brackets):
(//input[#name='question'])[7]
This selects the 7th element input in the document that satisfies the conditions in the predicate.
Edit:
People, who know Selenium (Dave Hunt) suggest that the above expression is written in Selenium as:
xpath=(//input[#name='question'])[7]
If you want the 7th input with name attribute with a value of question in the source then try the following:
/descendant::input[#name='question'][7]
I'm not very familiar with xpath. But I was working with xpath expressions and setting them in a database. Actually it's just the BAM tool for biztalk.
Anyway, I have an xml which could look like:
<File>
<Element1>element1<Element1>
<Element2>element2<Element2>
<Element3>
<SubElement>sub1</SubElement>
<SubElement>sub2</SubElement>
<SubElement>sub3</SubElement>
<Element3>
</File>
I was wondering if there is a way to use an xpath expression of getting all the SubElements concatted? At the moment, I am using:
/*[local-name()='File']/*[local-name()='Element3']/*[local-name()='SubElement']
This works if it only has one index. But apparently my xml sometimes has more nodes, so it gives NULL. I could just use
/*[local-name()='File']/*[local-name()='Element3']/*[local-name()='SubElement'][0]
but I need all the nodes. Is there a way to do this?
Thanks a lot!
Edit: I changed the XML, I was wrong, it's different, it should look like this:
<item>
<element1>el1</element1>
<element2>el2</element2>
<element3>el3</element3>
<element4>
<subEl1>subel1a</subEl1>
<subEl2>subel2a</subEl2>
</element4>
<element4>
<subEl1>subel1b</subEl1>
<subEl2>subel2b</subEl2>
</element4>
</item>
And I need to have a one line code to get a result like: "subel2a subel2b";
I need the one line because I set this xpath expression as an xml attribute (not my choice, it's specified). I tried string-join but it's not really working.
string-join(/file/Element3/SubElement, ',')
/File/Element3/SubElement will match all of the SubElement elements in your sample XML. What are you using to evaluate it?
If your evaluation method is subject to the "first node rule", then it will only match the first one. If you are using a method that returns a nodeset, then it will return all of them.
You can get all SubElements by using:
//SubElement
But this won't keep them grouped together how you want. You will want to do a query for all elements that contain a SubElement (basically do a search for the parent of any SubElements).
//parent::SubElement
Once you have that, you could (depending on your programming language) loop through the parents and concatenate the SubElements.