xpath Getting started with xpath Common HTML Operations
Example
If the input HTML DOM is
<html>
<body>
<a>link</a>
<div class='container' id='divone'>
<p class='common' id='enclosedone'>Element One</p>
<p class='common' id='enclosedtwo'>Element Two</p>
</div>
</body>
</html>
Find an element with a specific id in the entire page
//*[@id='divone'] # Returns <div class='container' id='divone'>
Find an element with a specific id in a particular path
/html/body/div/p[@id='enclosedone'] # Returns <p class='common' id='enclosedone'>Element One</p>
Select an element with a particular id & class
//p[@id='enclosedone' and @class='common'] # Returns <p class='common' id='enclosedone'>Element One</p>
Select the text of a particular element
//*[@id='enclosedone']/text() # Returns Element One
