如何使用 XPATH 从 html 中提取文本

Question

url <- "http://www.officedepot.com/a/browse/technology/N=5+9021/;jsessionid=00000a2ZDz-8D4MKY5wMPuithDX:17h4h7bfo"

library(RCurl)
library(XML)
html <- getURL(url[u])

trim <- function (x) gsub("^\\s+|\\s+$", "", x)
docs <- htmlParse(html, asText=TRUE)
data <-xpathApply(docs, "//*[not(self::script)]/text()",xmlValue)
data <- trim(gsub('\t|\n',' ',unlist(data)))
data <- data[data!='']
head(data)

Above code successfully extract all text from any url but along with text, I'm getting some style tag data

like, see below style tag

<style>
    .dat_wrapper {
      visibility: hidden;
    }
    .cke_widget_element .dat_wrapper {
      visibility: visible;
    }

And extracted text from this tag using XPATH expresseion I mentioned above, see output of data[2]

> data[2]

[1] ".dat_wrapper {visibility: hidden;} .cke_widget_element .dat_wrapper {visibility: visible;}"

I do not want such data. Please anybody help me to overcome this.

Answer 1

I assume you want to extract all the information in "Technologies" section with detailed description of each product?

If so, the solution would be straightforward, first parse the url's then extract the content. Now your code and inquiry doesn't make any sense.