Scraping with Python Selenium: iterate through html table without tags

Question

I'm a Python neophyte working on a fun little scraping project. Trying to pull info from here: http://www.airfleets.net/flottecie/American%20Airlines.htm

I'm in Python 2 and using Selenium

There's a table on the page with aircraft details. I want to iterate through the second column of this table, which is labeled "Active". Normally, I would select the table by using find_element_by_id. However, this table doesn't have an id tag. I think I need to find the table by find_element_by_xpath, but I am unsure of the path syntax to find the table and then also the rows in the second column.

In summary, how can I iterate through the rows of a table if the table does not have any identifying tags?

you can get elements by_tag or by_class. It gives list of elements and you can work like with normal list - using index (lst[x]), for loop (for x in lst), etc. you can event use find_element_by with every element on list to get "subelement". BTW. Chrome and Firefox has DevTools and you can see "xpath" or "css selector" (sometimes you need install extension) — furas
– furas, Commented Oct 28, 2016 at 19:21

sytech · Accepted Answer · 2016-10-28 20:14:52Z

4

You could use CSS selector or XPath. As mentioned in the comments, your browser's dev tools probably have a builtin way to do this.

That table's Xpath is

/html/body/table[4]/tbody/tr[1]/td/table[2]/tbody/tr/td[2]/table

And a CSS selector that you can use is

body > table:nth-child(6) > tbody > tr:nth-child(1) > td > table:nth-child(3) > tbody > tr > td:nth-child(2) > table

In Chrome, for example, you can obtain this information in the following way:

(1) Open up the dev tools and find the element. You can do this by right-clicking any element and clicking "inspect"

2) Right-click the element in the DOM, then select Copy > (Copy Selector / Copy XPath

answered Oct 28, 2016 at 20:14

sytech

42.7k8 gold badges77 silver badges126 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Scraping with Python Selenium: iterate through html table without tags

1 Answer 1

Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related