Xpath noob: querying an xml element using xpath and a unique attribute?

Posted by rutherford on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by rutherford
Published on 2009-11-16T20:29:06Z Indexed on 2010/05/11 4:14 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 287

Filed under:

xpath-expression

|

xpath

|

Xml

|

beginner

I am querying a particularly ugly HTML file using xpath. I want to extract an HTML table that is buried deep within the document. However instead of going down through the hierarchy from //html/, is there anyway I can just reference the table's unique id attribute?

Obviously this would have far less chance of breaking due to page edits too.

© Stack Overflow or respective owner

Related posts about xpath-expression

How to use XPath to filter elements by TextContent? get parent by axis?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hi all: I've found a similar question on SO, however, that seems not exactly what I wanna achieve: Say, this is a sample XML file: <root> <item> <id isInStock="true">10001</id> <category>Loose Balloon</category> </item> <item> … >>> More
Is this a valid XPath expression?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Is this xpath a valid XPath expression? (It does what it should ). #!/usr/bin/env perl use strict; use warnings; use 5.012; use XML::LibXML; my $string =<<EOS; <result> <cd> <artists> <artist class="1">Pumkinsingers</artist> <artist… >>> More
Iterate over framesets with XPath expression in JavaScript?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Why does the following JavaScript, when run in Firefox 3.6.3, delete all FRAMESET elements in a document, but the similar script that instead uses an XPath expression to select the FRAMESET elements, does not? Is document.evaluate() simply unable to match FRAMESET elements? Is there an error in… >>> More
Dynamically generate XPath expression using XML data

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hi! I would like to dynamically create XPath expressions in an XSL determined by data in an XML file. (i.e. the XML data is "concatenated" to create an XPath expression). Example of XML data: AAA BBB CCC Example of how I would like the XPath expression to look like: //AAA | //BBB… >>> More
Help in XPath expression

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I have an XML document which contains nodes like following:- <a class="custom">test</a> <a class="xyz"></a> I was tryng to get the nodes for which class is NOT "Custom" and I wrote an expression like following:- XmlNodeList nodeList = document.SelectNodes("//*[self::A[@class… >>> More

Related posts about xpath

xpath query in a servlet gives exception

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I have a Document object initialized in the init() method of the servlet and use it in the doPost() method to service the requests. selectNodeList() xpath query gives exception when the servlet services many request at same time. The Exception is shown below: Caused by: javax.xml.transform.TransformerException:… >>> More
XPath to find element based on another XPath element

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hi, I have an Java AST and I try to find a variable inside it via XPath. Lets say the variable is called 'foobar' I could use //VariableDeclarator/VariableDeclaratorId[@Image='foobar'] but what if I dont know the text 'foobar', but want to read it from another element //VariableDeclarator/VariableDeclaratorId[@Image=//SynchronizedStatement/Expression/PrimaryExpression/PrimaryPrefix/Name] the… >>> More
Xpath question Xml Xpath

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I need an xpath expression that would return the value of I need to get the value of this node. the value to extract is my xpath expression is //rates/rate[loantype='30-Year Fixed Rate'] The issue hre is that there are three value each node has a subtype element. Beside fileter for loantype… >>> More
php xpath query on and xpath result

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Can I use an xpath query on a result already obtained using xpath? >>> More
how to use nokogiri methods .xpath & .at_xpath

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm learning how to use nokogiri and few questions came to me based on the code below require 'rubygems' require 'mechanize' post_agent = WWW::Mechanize.new post_page = post_agent.get('http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=230708') puts "\nabsolute path with tbody gives nil" puts post_page… >>> More