Python LXML XPATH Returns Error With Valid Query

Question

I am running the following query:

//div[@class="review-list"]//div[@class="review review--with-sidebar"]//div[@class="review-content"]/p/string(.)

I get the following error:

lxml.etree.XPathEvalError: Invalid expression

However, if I use the following notation:

//div[@class="review-list"]//div[@class="review review--with-sidebar"]//div[@class="review-content"]/p/text()

All is well.

I assume the issue is with the use of the string(.) notation, but when I test it here it comes up fine, so I'm assuming its valid syntax.

I'm essentially running the following code:

from lxml import html
tree = html.fromstring(PAGE_CONTENT)
results = tree.xpath(QUERY)

Is there an alternative method I could be using that will allow the use of expressions like this? string-join seems to cause similar issues.

zx485 · Accepted Answer · 2019-02-05 21:52:40Z

2

The reason for your error is that the notation

.../string(.)

is only valid in XPath 2.0 or above. In XPath 1.0 it is invalid and throws an error.

An alternative that is valid in XPath-1.0 would be wrapping the whole expression in the string(...) function like this:

string(//div[@class="review-list"]//div[@class="review review--with-sidebar"]//div[@class="review-content"]/p)

answered Feb 5, 2019 at 21:52

zx485

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1 Comment

Bryant Makes Programs Over a year ago

Dang, thanks friend. Wrapping it in a string unfortunately concatenates all results. And BLAH/string(p) likewise throws an error. Will have to revisit the drawing board me thinks.

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