CODEWITHSUNDEEP
htmlxmlxpath
Mutuelinvestor
Mutuelinvestor

Reputation: 3538

How to access various parts of a link with XPath

I'm fairly new to XPath and wanted to see how granular you can get when accessing various HTML components.

I'm currently using the this xpath

//*[@id=\"resultsDiv\"]/p[1]/a

to access the HTML (abbreviated) below:

<p style="margin:0;border-width:0px;"><a href="./t_Person.aspx?PersonID=140476">Bill%20Jones</a></p>

The XPath returns this: <a href="./t_Person.aspx?PersonID=140476">Bill%20Jones</a>

But what I'm trying to get is simply the PersonID = 140476.

Question: Is it possible to write an XPath that results in 140476, or do I need to take what was returned and use a regular expression other method to access the PersonID.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 40

Answers (1)

kjhughes
kjhughes

Reputation: 111541

If this XPath,

//*[@id=\"resultsDiv\"]/p[1]/a

selects this a element,

<a href="./t_Person.aspx?PersonID=140476">Bill%20Jones</a>

then this XPath,

substring-after(//*[@id='resultsDiv']/p[1]/a/@href, 'PersonID=')

will return 140476 alone, as requested.

Upvotes: 1

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