# How to write this xpath? **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [September 7, 2010, 7:07am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-write-this-xpath/194560 "2010-09-07T07:07:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![luofeiyu](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/9de0a6/32.png) [@luofeiyu](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/luofeiyu)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 7:07am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-write-this-xpath/194560/1 "2010-09-07T07:07:00Z")
there is an html file | ok **Sep 10** | Oct 10 | Dec 10 | 123 | 567 | | when i open it with firefox,the output is : ok Sep 10 | Oct 10 | Dec 10 123 567 what i want to get is ok Sep 10 | Oct 10 | Dec 10 here is my codes require 'rubygems' require 'nokogiri' web='/home/test' doc = Nokogiri::HTML.parse(open(web)) data=doc.xpath('/html/body/table/tr/td') puts data i get ok **Sep 10** | Oct 10 | Dec 10 | 123 | 567 | how can i get : ok **Sep 10** | Oct 10 | Dec 10 ---
**Author:** ![luofeiyu](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/9de0a6/32.png) [@luofeiyu](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/luofeiyu)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 8:30am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-write-this-xpath/194560/2 "2010-09-07T08:30:37Z")
On 07.09.2010 07:07, Pen T. wrote: > 123 > ok Sep 10 | Oct 10 | Dec 10 > i get > > how can i get : ok **Sep 10** |Oct 10 |Dec 10 You want the first row? Try ‘/html/body/table/tr[1]/td’ See also [http://www.zvon.org/xxl/XPathTutorial/General/examples.html](http://www.zvon.org/xxl/XPathTutorial/General/examples.html) [http://www.w3schools.com/xpath/](http://www.w3schools.com/xpath/) Cheers robert ---
**Author:** ![luofeiyu](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/9de0a6/32.png) [@luofeiyu](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/luofeiyu)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 9:05am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-write-this-xpath/194560/3 "2010-09-07T09:05:11Z")
think for your help,but your method can’t work ,i have made a try. ---
**Author:** ![luofeiyu](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/9de0a6/32.png) [@luofeiyu](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/luofeiyu)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 10:18am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-write-this-xpath/194560/4 "2010-09-07T10:18:59Z")
On Tue, Sep 7, 2010 at 9:37 AM, Robert K. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > On Tue, Sep 7, 2010 at 9:05 AM, Pen T. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > > > think for your help,but your method can’t work ,i have made a try. > > Ah, I see - it’s more complicated. I think it should be one of these > depending on whether you want the text nodes: > > /html/body/table[1]/tr[1]/td[1]/(.|strong|a) > /html/body/table[1]/tr[1]/td[1]/(.|strong|a)/text() > > but I cannot test it right now since I don’t have Nokogiri on this machine. Now this looks awful but apparently it works: $doc.xpath ‘/html/body/table[1]/tr[1]/td[1]/text()|/html/body/table[1]/tr[1]/td[1]/strong/text()|/html/body/table[1]/tr[1]/td[1]/a/text()’ If you want the elements you need to remove all “/text()” from the above. The difficult thing here is that you want to select only a portion of the child nodes of /table/tr/td. Kind regards robert ---
**Author:** ![luofeiyu](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/9de0a6/32.png) [@luofeiyu](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/luofeiyu)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 9:37am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-write-this-xpath/194560/5 "2010-09-07T09:37:58Z")
On Tue, Sep 7, 2010 at 9:05 AM, Pen T. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > think for your help,but your method can’t work ,i have made a try. Ah, I see - it’s more complicated. I think it should be one of these depending on whether you want the text nodes: /html/body/table[1]/tr[1]/td[1]/(.|strong|a) /html/body/table[1]/tr[1]/td[1]/(.|strong|a)/text() but I cannot test it right now since I don’t have Nokogiri on this machine. Kind regards robert