从网页中的表获取XPATH

Question

I have the following xpath: /html/body/div/div/div/div[2]/div/div/div/div[3]/div/table/tbody/tr/td[2]/a

from:

<div id="search-result-block">
<div class="">
<table class="search-result" width="100%">
  <tbody>
  <tr>
    <td class="result-num">
    <td class="result-header" colspan="2">
      <a class="srtitle" href="http://books.ioba.org/books/4359746.html">1001 Designs for     Whittling and Woodcarving</a>
      <br>
      <div class="srauthor">Tangerman, Elmer John </div>
    </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

and I need to get the inner html of that xpath, however my application is giving me a null exception (i guess it is finding that the path is wrong or something)

Here is my current code:

HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlNode rootNode = htmlDoc.DocumentNode;
titleBook = rootNode.SelectSingleNode(@".//table/tbody/tr/td[2]/a").InnerHtml.ToString();

I tried using @"//table[contains(@class, 'result-header')]/a" instead but still did not work. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

All in all, I believe the easiest way to select your node is

//a[@class='srtitle']

But your HTML is really messy... Missing some matching tags, for example, which will render the behavior non-predictable.

Your first path doesn't work because the two td seem to be actually nested, not siblings: it should be @"//table/tbody/tr/td/td/a" .

The second xpath could be simplified and fixed with @"//td[@class="result-header']/a , or if you want @"//td[contains(@class, 'result-header')]/a" .

Answer 2

I think you already have your solution, but here's a LINQ-esq library for generating xpath expressions for similar situations.

http://www.unit-testing.net/CurrentArticle/How-to-Create-Xpath-From-Lambda-Expressions.html