# Hpricot

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/hpricot/145167>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [August 6, 2008, 4:55pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/hpricot/145167 "2008-08-06T16:55:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![joep](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/87869e/32.png) [@joep](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/joep)\
**Post date:** [August 6, 2008, 4:55pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/hpricot/145167/1 "2008-08-06T16:55:00Z")

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Good morning to you all,

I need to use Hpricot to search through HTML, find links, and search  
through those links.

I’ve got as far as finding all the links  
links = page.search(“/html/body//a”)

How can I search through the links efficiently? For example, if I only  
want to find links that point to [http://www.joe.net](http://www.joe.net), how can I do this  
with Hpricot?

I also want to see if the link is nofollow or not.

Basically, to make a long question short, how can I search for certain  
HTML inside the Hpricot elements?

Sincerely,  
Joe

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![joep](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/87869e/32.png) [@joep](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/joep)\
**Post date:** [August 6, 2008, 6:58pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/hpricot/145167/2 "2008-08-06T18:58:41Z")

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> I also want to see if the link is nofollow or not.
> 
> Basically, to make a long question short, how can I search for certain  
> HTML inside the Hpricot elements?

[http://code.whytheluckystiff.net/hpricot/wiki/HpricotChallenge#WildcardinAttributeSearch](http://code.whytheluckystiff.net/hpricot/wiki/HpricotChallenge#WildcardinAttributeSearch)

Should get you started.

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**Author:** ![joep](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/87869e/32.png) [@joep](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/joep)\
**Post date:** [August 6, 2008, 7:11pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/hpricot/145167/3 "2008-08-06T19:11:34Z")

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On Wed, Aug 06, 2008 at 04:55:00PM +0200, Joe P. wrote:

> want to find links that point to [http://www.joe.net](http://www.joe.net), how can I do this  
> with Hpricot?
> 
> I also want to see if the link is nofollow or not.
> 
> Basically, to make a long question short, how can I search for certain  
> HTML inside the Hpricot elements?

This is not just an RTFM reply, but a pointer to the docs that will help  
you out:

[http://code.whytheluckystiff.net/hpricot/wiki/AnHpricotShowcase](http://code.whytheluckystiff.net/hpricot/wiki/AnHpricotShowcase)

> Sincerely,  
> Joe  
> –Greg

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![joep](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/87869e/32.png) [@joep](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/joep)\
**Post date:** [August 6, 2008, 8:08pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/hpricot/145167/4 "2008-08-06T20:08:22Z")

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Since you are using XPath, you can try with something like

links = page.search(’/html/body//a[@href=http://www.joe.net]’)

Explanation: The brakets let you specify a filter for your search and  
you can use @ to access an attribute inside an element.

Also, for more complicated stuff you can just traverse the array that  
the method search returns like so:

links.each do |link|  
if LINK MEETS CRITERIA do stuff  
end