Xpath Child node query

Question

<tr>
  <td><span style="white-space:nowrap">Aug 29, 2016 06:05</span></td>
  <td><a class="A" title="B" href="C">
  <td>....
   ....

</tr>

I have many < td> elements wrapped in < tr> elements among the html I want to access every single text within the first < td> element in its < tr> wrap and every single href for the second < td> element.

Should probably use 2 different queries for each.

char = tree.xpath('//tr/td[2]/@href')

this is what I came up with for the href query but wouldn't do the work for me.

Update

thanks to help from lauda I got in the right track

This is what worked out for me

first = tree.xpath('//tr/td/span/text()')
second = tree.xpath('//tr/td[2]/a/@href')

Answer 1

The text is not directly in the td , for the first you could use something like:

//tr/td/span

for the second:

//tr/td/a

or if you want the href and not the element then:

//tr/td/a/@href

Answer 2

thanks a lot that lead me to the right direction
date = tree.xpath('//tr/td/span/text()') hrefs = tree.xpath('//tr/td[2]/a/@href')