How to provide xpath value for web scraping

Question

How to create XPath value from HTML elements? I used CSS so far for web scraping but I want to learn how to create XPath value. Can someone explain?

Answer 1

Hey Karthik,

XPath uses path expressions to select nodes in an XML/HTML document. The node is selected by following a path or steps. 

The useful path expressions are listed below:

Expression	Description
nodename	Selects all nodes with the name "nodename"
/	Selects from the root node
//	Selects nodes in the document from the current node that matches the selection no matter where they are
.	Selects the current node
..	Selects the parent of the current node
@	Selects attributes

 Example - 

/div/span/#id_name/.class_name

You can find examples and explanation here,

https://www.w3schools.com/xml/xpath_examples.asp