xpathxidelxpathquery

Xidel: How to choose only 1 from many same value/class and remove unneeded elements from the result?

xidel -se '//strong[@class="n-heading"][1]/text()[1]' 'https://www.anekalogam.co.id/id'

will print out 3 same outputs

15 June 2020 
                     
15 June 2020 
                     
15 June 2020  

so, what should I do in order to choose only 1 of them?

edit:

inside the strong class, the value looks like this:

 15 June 2020 
                     

How to print only the "15 June 2020"?

Solution

  • Let me illustrate why this happens with the following example.

    'test.htm':

    <html>
  <body>
    <div>
      <span>test1</span>
      <span>test2</span>
      <span>test3</span>
    </div>
    <div>
      <span>test4</span>
    </div>
    <div>
      <span>test5</span>
    </div>
    <div>
      <span>test6</span>
    </div>
  </body>
</html>

    $ xidel -s "test.htm" -e '//div[1]/span[1]'
test1

$ xidel -s "test.htm" -e '//span[1]'
test1
test4
test5
test6

$ xidel -s "test.htm" -e '(//span)[1]'
test1

    In other words, you have to put the "strong"-node between parentheses:

    $ xidel -s "https://www.anekalogam.co.id/id" \
  -e '(//strong[@class="n-heading"])[1]/text()[1]'

    This isn't needed if you grab the parent-node instead:

    $ xidel -s "https://www.anekalogam.co.id/id" \
  -e '//p[@class="n-smaller ngc-intro"]/strong/text()[1]'

    [Bonus]

    You've probably noticed already that the desired text-node spans 2 lines and ends with a &nbsp; (a "No-Break Space"). To have Xidel return just "15 June 2020":

    $ xidel -s "https://www.anekalogam.co.id/id" -e '
  //p[@class="n-smaller ngc-intro"]/strong/normalize-space(
    substring-before(text(),x:cps(160))
  )
'