How do I scrape nested data using selenium and Python>

Question

I basically want to scrape Feb 2016 - Present under <span class="visually-hidden"> , but I can't see to get to it. Here's the HTML at code:

<div class="pv-entity__summary-info">

<h3 class="Sans-17px-black-85%-semibold">Litigation Paralegal</h3>

<h4>
  <span class="visually-hidden">Company Name</span>
  <span class="pv-entity__secondary-title Sans-15px-black-55%">Olswang</span>
</h4>


  <div class="pv-entity__position-info detail-facet m0"><h4 class="pv-entity__date-range Sans-15px-black-55%">
      <span class="visually-hidden">Dates Employed</span>
      <span>Feb 2016 – Present</span>
    </h4><h4 class="pv-entity__duration de Sans-15px-black-55% ml0">
        <span class="visually-hidden">Employment Duration</span>
        <span class="pv-entity__bullet-item">1 yr 2 mos</span>
      </h4><h4 class="pv-entity__location detail-facet Sans-15px-black-55% inline-block">
      <span class="visually-hidden">Location</span>
      <span class="pv-entity__bullet-item">London, United Kingdom</span>
    </h4></div>

</div>

And here is what I've been doing at the moment with selenium in my code:

        date= browser.find_element_by_xpath('.//div[@class = "pv-entity__duration de Sans-15px-black-55% ml0"]').text
        print date

But this gives no results. How would I go about either pulling the date?

Answer 1

There is no div with class="pv-entity__duration de Sans-15px-black-55% ml0" , but h4 . If you want to get text of div , then try:

date= browser.find_element_by_xpath('.//div[@class = "pv-entity__position-info detail-facet m0"]').text
print date

If you want to get "Feb 2016 - Present" , then try

date= browser.find_element_by_xpath('//h4[@class="pv-entity__date-range Sans-15px-black-55%"]/span[2]').text
print date

Answer 2

You can rewrite your xpath code something like this :

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
from lxml import html
import unicodedata


html_str = """
<div class="pv-entity__summary-info">

<h3 class="Sans-17px-black-85%-semibold">Litigation Paralegal</h3>

<h4>
  <span class="visually-hidden">Company Name</span>
  <span class="pv-entity__secondary-title Sans-15px-black-55%">Olswang</span>
</h4>


  <div class="pv-entity__position-info detail-facet m0"><h4 class="pv-entity__date-range Sans-15px-black-55%">
      <span class="visually-hidden">Dates Employed</span>
      <span>Feb 2016 – Present</span>
    </h4><h4 class="pv-entity__duration de Sans-15px-black-55% ml0">
        <span class="visually-hidden">Employment Duration</span>
        <span class="pv-entity__bullet-item">1 yr 2 mos</span>
      </h4><h4 class="pv-entity__location detail-facet Sans-15px-black-55% inline-block">
      <span class="visually-hidden">Location</span>
      <span class="pv-entity__bullet-item">London, United Kingdom</span>
    </h4></div>

</div>
"""

root = html.fromstring(html_str)
# For fetching Feb 2016 â Present :
txt = root.xpath('//h4[@class="pv-entity__date-range Sans-15px-black-55%"]/span/text()')[1]
# For fetching 1 yr 2 mos :
txt1 = root.xpath('//h4[@class="pv-entity__duration de Sans-15px-black-55% ml0"]/span/text()')[1]
print txt
print txt1

This will result in :

Feb 2016 â Present
1 yr 2 mos