🚀 We are hiring! See open positions

How to count selections in XPath and why?

by scrapecrow Apr 19, 2023
# xpath

Counting selection can be a very powerful feature in XPath when parsing web scraped HTML pages.
Selection count can be used to navigate complex trees where parsing by attributes or values is not possible.

For this count() function can be used. See these interactive examples:

<!-- select only paragraphs related to product data but not metadata --> <article> <h2>Data</h2> <!-- this section contains product information --> <p>price: 199</p> <p>year: 2023</p> <h2>Data</h2> <!-- this section contains meta information --> <p>reviews: good</p> <p>updated: yesterday</p> </article>

The count() function is a great way to navigate bare HTML trees that otherwise might appear unparsable.

Related Articles