python - find xpath of element containing string

Question

I build a small script that supposed to find some specific string in a page and return the xpath of the element containing this string. The purpose is to use this xpath for finding string with same context.

I'm using this code:

import requests
from lxml import html
page = requests.get("http://www.w3schools.com/xpath/")
tree = html.fromstring(page.text)
result = tree.xpath('//*[. = "XML"]')

result[0] returns <Element b at 0x7f034a08e940> and I can't figure out how to find this element's XPath anyway .

The string I would like to have is:

/html/body/div[4]/div/div[2]/div[2]/div[1]/div/ul/li[2]

xpath subpage is now moved to w3schools.com/xml/xpath_intro.asp — dxtr80
– dxtr80, Commented Jan 11, 2023 at 22:14

har07 · Accepted Answer · 2015-04-27 08:22:04Z

10

You can use getpath() to get xpath from element, for example :

import requests
from lxml import html

page = requests.get("http://www.w3schools.com/xpath/")
root = html.fromstring(page.text)
tree = root.getroottree()
result = root.xpath('//*[. = "XML"]')
for r in result:
    print(tree.getpath(r))

Output :

/html/body/div[3]/div/ul/li[10]
/html/body/div[3]/div/ul/li[10]/a
/html/body/div[4]/div/div[2]/div[2]/div[1]/div/ul/li[2]
/html/body/div[5]/div/div[6]/h3
/html/body/div[6]/div/div[4]/h3
/html/body/div[7]/div/div[4]/h3

answered Apr 27, 2015 at 8:22

har07

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1 Comment

limonik Over a year ago

I tried your code with URL : w3schools.com/xml/xpath_intro.asp. Actually there are 8 elements include XML string but script returns only 7 Element. Maybe because of the Panel?

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