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Hello, I’m making a Spider to capture with Xpath some web data.
But the creation of xpath is a bit laborious. Does anyone know any way to train Xpath? Example; I click 5 times on a link and some tool generates xpath.
Any hint is welcome.
Thank you!
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I compiled the answers found here:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3030487/is-there-a-way-to-get-the-xpath-in-google-chrome
When using "Chrome Dev Tools" (You can right-click on any element and ask to "inspect element") you can right-click on the element, then "Copy Xpath".
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/xpath-helper/hgimnogjllphhhkhlmebbmlgjoejdpjl
You can also use $x in the Chrome javascript console.
ex: $x("//img")
I didn’t get to test, but this tool apparently seems to be what you want.
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Try the bookmarklet Selectorgadget.
It works like this: right after you fire, you click on something you want to capture. It generates a very generic selector, and highlights in yellow the captured sections.
From there on, you can refine the selection with: 1) by clicking on a highlighted area to remove from the selection; or 2) by clicking on an unassigned area to add the selection.
By default it generates a CSS selector, but has an Xpath button to pick up the equivalent expression in Xpath.
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Has a add-on for Firefox that queries XPath on a page, called XPath Checker.
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Install xmllint (tiny tool, usually already installed on linux) and it’s time to practice xpath:
xmllint --xpath '//symbol' file.xml
or, in the case of html:
xmllint --html --xpath '//table' file.html
or even
xmllint --html --xpath '//a' 'http://a.b.c/index.html' > links.txt
Browser other questions tagged xpath scrapy
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The idea of Xpather seems to be what I need.. but I couldn’t install in Firefox
– LeoCBS
Nice build, Arthur, +1! I’ve used this add-on for Chrome a lot. I added a reply with http://selectorgadget.com -- take a look if you don’t know, it’s pretty cool. ;)
– elias