How can I find the link URL by link text with XPath?

Question

I have a well formed XHTML page. I want to find the destination URL of a link when I have the text that is linked.

Example

<a href="http://stackoverflow.com">programming questions site</a>
<a href="http://cnn.com">news</a>

I want an XPath expression such that if given programming questions site it will give http://stackoverflow.com and if I give it news it will give http://cnn.com.

score 155 · Accepted Answer · edited Oct 13 '12 at 22:20

155

Should be something similar to:

//a[text()='text_i_want_to_find']/@href

edited Oct 13 '12 at 22:20

answered May 27 '09 at 12:08

Badaro

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will I ever learn xpath? when I see a query it is so obvious and easy to understand... but I am never able to write one on my own – flybywire May 27 '09 at 12:18
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@flybywire If you read this Stanford's free Introduction to Databases course has a good section on XML and XPath. – James P. Jun 28 '12 at 12:44
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Instead of text(), you can use ".=", for example //a[.='Register here'] – danpop Feb 03 '16 at 14:31
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What if I don't know the text? Can I select the nodes which contains `http` or certain keyword? – Alston Jul 29 '18 at 15:09

score 80 · Answer 2 · edited Jul 01 '20 at 21:55

80

Too late for you, but for anyone else with the same question...

//a[contains(text(), 'programming')]/@href

Of course, 'programming' can be any text fragment.

edited Jul 01 '20 at 21:55

David Moles

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answered May 23 '11 at 20:00

MaDeuce

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This one is more generalized. Good share – Aaron Gillion Jun 13 '15 at 17:42
This is case sensitive. Can I ignore the case here? – user3060430 Oct 03 '20 at 09:29

score 10 · Answer 3 · edited Jul 01 '20 at 21:56

10

//a[text()='programming quesions site']/@href

which basically identifies an anchor node <a> that has the text you want, and extracts the href attribute.

edited Jul 01 '20 at 21:56

David Moles

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answered May 27 '09 at 12:10

Brian Agnew

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score 6 · Answer 4 · edited Nov 25 '09 at 13:50

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Think of the phrase in the square brackets as a WHERE clause in SQL.

So this query says, "select the "href" attribute (@) of an "a" tag that appears anywhere (//), but only where (the bracketed phrase) the textual contents of the "a" tag is equal to 'programming questions site'".

edited Nov 25 '09 at 13:50

Peter Mortensen

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answered May 27 '09 at 14:50

Baxter Tidwell

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Hi Peter, do you have any tutorial site to learn xpath query? – Karim Narsindani Feb 20 '15 at 02:05
a detailed blog on xpaths: https://sandeepsamudrala.hashnode.dev/know-all-about-xpath-in-one-go – San Nov 16 '22 at 01:44

score 4 · Answer 5 · edited Jul 01 '20 at 21:56

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For case insensitive contains, use the following:

//a[contains(translate(text(),'PROGRAMMING','programming'), 'programming')]/@href

translate converts capital letters in PROGRAMMING to lower case programming.

edited Jul 01 '20 at 21:56

David Moles

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answered Jan 03 '13 at 21:42

Abdo

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Please don't add "thanks" as answers. Invest some time in the site and you will gain sufficient [privileges](http://stackoverflow.com/privileges) to upvote answers you like, which is the Stack Overflow way of saying thank you. – Sklivvz Jun 30 '13 at 12:07
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"Thanks" wasn't my "answer". I was, in a way, giving credit to an answer above that I improved on. – Abdo Jul 01 '13 at 12:22

score 1 · Answer 6 · edited Oct 13 '12 at 22:18

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if you are using html agility pack use getattributeValue:

$doc2.DocumentNode.SelectNodes("//div[@class='className']/div[@class='InternalClass']/a[@class='InternalClass']").GetAttributeValue("href","")

edited Oct 13 '12 at 22:18

Adi Lester

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answered Oct 13 '12 at 22:13

Miguel Vaz

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How can I find the link URL by link text with XPath?

6 Answers6

Linked