XPath expressions

Aug. 9, 2020

Web scrapping

SELECT BY PATH (parent/childrens... structures)

Select element with absolute
/html/body/aaa/bbb/ccc

Select all (//) elements 'ccc'
//ccc

Select all elements 'ccc' which are children of 'bbb'
//bbb/ccc

Select all (*) elements of some level
//bbb/ccc/*

Select all (*) elements
//*

Select elements 'ddd' which have 5 ancestors
/*/*/*/*/*/ddd

Select element at position [n] at some level
/html/body/aaa/bbb/ccc/*[2]

Select last element at some level
/html/body/aaa/bbb/ccc/*[last()]

Other child selection syntax:

/AAA                    = /child::AAA
/AAA/BBB                = /child::AAA/child::BBB
Possible syntax:          /child::AAA/BBB

SELECT PARENT OF AN ELEMENT

Select parent of all elements type "ccc"
//ccc/..
or
//ccc/parent::*

SELECT DESCENDANTS OF AN ELEMENT

Select all descendants of an element
//ccc/descendant::*

Select some descendants of an element
//aaa/descendant::ddd

SELECT ANCESTORS

Select ancestors of elements type "ddd"
//ddd/ancestor::*

SELECTING FOLLOWING-SIBLINGS

Select following siblings of an element
//ccc/following-sibling::*

SELECTING PRECEDING-SIBLINGS

Select preceding siblings of an element
//eee/preceding-sibling::*

SELECT FOLLOWING ELEMETS

Select all elements after the elements type 'aaa'
//aaa/following::*

SELECT PRECEDING ELEMETS

Selects all nodes that appear before the current node in the document, except ancestors, attribute nodes and namespace nodes
//eee/preceding::*

SELECT DESCENDANT OR SELF

Select all descendants of an element and element itself
//bbb/descendant-or-self::*

'AND' OPERATOR FOR X/data/en2/xpath/

Combining multiple x/data/en2/xpath/ with operator "|"
//ddd | //fff

SELECTION BY PROPERTY

Select all elements of any type which have property "id"
//*[@id]

Select all elements of type "ddd" which have property "id"
//ddd[@id]

Select all values of properties "id" from all elements of type "ddd"
//ddd/@id

Select all elements of type "ddd" which have property "name"
//ddd[@name]

Select all elements of type "ddd" which have any property
//ddd[@*]

Select all elements of type "ddd" which have no property
//ddd[not(@*)]

Select all elements of type "ddd" with "id" property which contains a string
//ddd[contains(@id, "select")]

Select all elements of type "ddd" with "id" property which not contain a string
//ddd[not(contains(@id, "here"))]

Select all elements of type "ddd" with "id" property which begin with string
//ddd[starts-with(@id, "id")]

SELECT BY ELEMENT TAG NAME

Select all elements of type "ddd" (equivalent with //ddd)
//*[name()="ddd"]

Select all elements with names starting with string ...
//*[starts-with(name(),"d")]

Select all elements with names containing string ...
//*[contains(name(),"x")]

Select all elements with length-name (=, >, <) ...
//*[string-length(name()) = 5]

SELECT BY CHILDREN COUNTS

Select all elements which have two children "ccc"
//*[count(ccc)=2]

Select all elements which have three childrens of any type
//*[count(*)=3]

SELECT - USING TEXT OF ELEMENT

Select the text from all elements of type "ccc"
//ccc/text()

Select all elements of type "ccc" which have text "this"
//ccc[text()="this"]

Example1: select form

/html/body/form[1] or //form[1] or //form[@id='loginForm']

Example2: select input

//form/input[@name='username'] or //form[@id='loginForm']/input[1] or //input[@name='username']

Example3: select input
//input[@name='continue'][@type='button'] or //form[@id='loginForm']/input[4]

XPath expressions

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