Extracting node values using XPath

Question

There is a section of amazon.com from which I want to extract the data (node value only, not the link) for each item.

The value I\'m looking for is inside and <

Answer 1

The following expression should work:

//*[@id='ref_1000']/li/a/span[@class='narrowValue']

For better performance you could provide a direct path to the start of this expression, but the one provided is more flexible (given that you probably need this to work across multiple pages).

Keep in mind, also, that your HTML parser might generate a different result tree than the one produced by Firebug (where I tested). Here's an even more flexible solution:

//*[@id='ref_1000']//span[@class='narrowValue']

Flexibility comes with potential performance (and accuracy) costs, but it's often the only choice when dealing with tag soup.