Question
This is a follow up question to one I asked last week, posted here. I have gotten past the original issue but now I am running into a slightly different issue.
I am now able to get the attribute of an item I'm interested in if the html tags aren't nested using the GetAttributeValue method, here it is the data-pid but I am now having trouble grabbing the attribute of an item that is in nested tags, in my code snippet it is the date. I am using xpath and the HtmlAgility pack to parse the html here but in the example below the same date gets returned over and over.
Here is what the $item object looks like:
Attributes : {class, data-pid}
ChildNodes : {#text, a, #text, span...}
Closed : True
ClosingAttributes : {}
FirstChild : HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlTextNode
HasAttributes : True
HasChildNodes : True
HasClosingAttributes : False
Id :
InnerHtml : <a href="/mod/4175126893.html" class="i"><span class="price">$20</span></a> <span class="star"></span> <span class="pl"> <span class="date">Nov
30</span> <a href="/mod/4175126893.html">Unlock Any GSM Cell Phone Today!</a> </span> <span class="l2"> <span class="price">$20</span> <span
class="pnr"> <small> (Des Moines)</small> <span class="px"> <span class="p"> </span></span> </span> <a class="gc" href="/mod/"
data-cat="mod">cell phones - by dealer</a> </span>
InnerText : $20 Nov 30 Unlock Any GSM Cell Phone Today! $20 (Des Moines) cell phones - by dealer
LastChild : HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlTextNode
Line : 305
LinePosition : 5408
Name : p
NextSibling : HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlTextNode
NodeType : Element
OriginalName : p
OuterHtml : <p class="row" data-pid="4175126893"> <a href="/mod/4175126893.html" class="i"><span class="price">$20</span></a> <span class="star"></span>
<span class="pl"> <span class="date">Nov 30</span> <a href="/mod/4175126893.html">Unlock Any GSM Cell Phone Today!</a> </span> <span class="l2">
<span class="price">$20</span> <span class="pnr"> <small> (Des Moines)</small> <span class="px"> <span class="p"> </span></span> </span> <a
class="gc" href="/mod/" data-cat="mod">cell phones - by dealer</a> </span> </p>
OwnerDocument : HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlDocument
ParentNode : HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlNode
PreviousSibling : HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlTextNode
StreamPosition : 18733
XPath : /html[1]/body[1]/article[1]/section[1]/div[1]/div[2]/p[11]
Attributes : {class, data-pid}
ChildNodes : {#text, a, #text, span...}
Closed : True
ClosingAttributes : {}
I want to pull out data from the outerhtml value.
OuterHtml : <p class="row" data-latitude="41.5937565437255" data-longitude="-93.6437636649079" data-pid="4184719674"> <a href="/mod/4184719674.html" class="i"></a>
<span class="star"></span> <span class="pl"> <span class="date">Nov 27</span> <a href="/mod/4184719674.html">iPhone and other Cell Phone Unlocks</a>
</span> <span class="l2"> <span class="pnr"> <small> (Des Moines)</small> <span class="px"> <span class="p"> <a href="#" class="maptag"
data-pid="4184719674">map</a></span></span> </span> <a class="gc" href="/mod/" data-cat="mod">cell phones - by dealer</a> </span> </p>
I can grab the data-pid no problem. Here is what the current code looks like:
ForEach ($item in $results) {
# This is working
$ID = $item.GetAttributeValue("data-pid", "")
# This is looping over the same item
$Date = $item.SelectSingleNode("//span[@class='date']").InnerText
}
What I want to do is to be able to grab attributes from the different tags that are contained in the outerhtml object using my xpath statements but I can't figure out how to do that. Is that the best way to go about the problem or should I just be using some regex to get the value I want?
Let me know what other details I need to post.
Accepted Answer
I haven't used the HTML Agility Pack, but AFAICS built-in tools should suffice anyway:
$url = 'http://www.example.com/path/to/some.html'
$html = (Invoke-Webrequest $url).ParsedHTML
$html.getElementsByTagName('p') | ? { $_.className -eq 'row' } | % {
$ID = $_.getAttributeNode('data-pid').value
$Date = $_.getElementsByTagName('span') | ? { $_.className -eq 'date' } |
% { $_.innerText }
# do stuff with $ID and $Date
"{0}: {1}" -f $ID, $Date
}
Note that Invoke-Webrequest requires PowerShell v3. Use the Internet Explorer COM object if your limited to PowerShell v2:
$ie = New-Object -COM InternetExplorer.Application
$ie.Navigate($url)
while ($ie.ReadyState -ne 4) { sleep 100 }
$html = $ie.Document
If your HTML file is a local file, replace the Invoke-Webrequest line with something like this:
$htmlfile = 'C:\path\to\some.html'
$html = New-Object -COM HTMLFile
$html.write((Get-Content $htmlfile | Out-String))
Popular Answer
I'm way too late but here's your mistake. You've been using absolute paths.
ForEach ($item in $results) {
# This is working
$ID = $item.GetAttributeValue("data-pid", "")
# This is looping over the same item
$Date = $item.SelectSingleNode("//span[@class='date']").InnerText
# This is looping over the different items (i.e. this is what what you want)
$Date = $item.SelectSingleNode(".//span[@class='date']").InnerText
}