XPath¶ ↑

XPath is a Ruby DSL around a subset of XPath 1.0. It’s primary purpose is to facilitate writing complex XPath queries from Ruby code.

Generating expressions¶ ↑

To create quick, one-off expressions, XPath.generate can be used:

XPath.generate { |x| x.descendant(:ul)[x.attr(:id) == 'foo'] }

However for more complex expressions, it is probably ore convenient to include the XPath module into your own class or module:

module MyXPaths
  include XPath

  def foo_ul
    descendant(:ul)[attr(:id) == 'foo']
  end

  def password_field(id)
    descendant(:input)[attr(:type) == 'password'][attr(:id) == id]
  end
end

Both ways return an XPath::Expression instance, which can be further modified. To convert the expression to a string, just call #to_s on it.

HTML¶ ↑

XPath comes with a set of premade XPaths for use with HTML documents.

License¶ ↑

(The MIT License)

Copyright © 2010 Jonas Nicklas

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the ‘Software’), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ‘AS IS’, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.