CODEWITHSUNDEEP
htmlxpath
jumbotrone
jumbotrone

Reputation: 25

Get inner href of an href link with xpath

I just started out with Python and learning about xpath expressions. I'm trying to get a div, an a class, look for the href inside the a class and then get the part of the href, then just continue with something.

div class: dropdown-menu and a class: dropdown-item

My url: https://www.something.com/library/category/stuff

My xpath expression: response.xpath("//div[@class='dropdown-menu']//a[@class='dropdown-item']//a[contains(@href, 'category')]")

It just returns an empty string and I can't figure out why, please advice.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 501

Answers (1)

Tomalak
Tomalak

Reputation: 338208

Since an <a> can't really be nested inside an <a>, I suppose you meant to write two conditions for the same <a> here:

response.xpath("//div[@class='dropdown-menu']//a[@class='dropdown-item']//a[contains(@href, 'category')]")

That would be written like this:

response.xpath("//div[@class='dropdown-menu']//a[@class='dropdown-item' and contains(@href, 'category')]")

or like this (predicates, i.e. the filter conditions in the square brackets, can be chained and are evaluated one after another):

response.xpath("//div[@class='dropdown-menu']//a[@class='dropdown-item'][contains(@href, 'category')]")

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions