How to use substring() with Import.io?

Question

I'm having some issues with XPath and import.io and I hope you'll be able to help me. :)

The html code:

<a href="page.php?var=12345">

For the moment, I manage to extract the content of the href ( page.php?var=12345 ) with this:

./td[3]/a[1]/@href

Though, I would like to just collect: 12345

substring might be the solution but it does not seem to work on import.io as I use it...

substring(./td[3]/a[1]/@href,13)

Any ideas of what the problem is?

Thank's a lot in advance!

Answer 1

Try using this for the xpath: (Have the field selected as Text)

.//*[@class='oeil']/a/@href

Then use this for your regex:

([^=]*)$

This will get you the ISBN number you are looking for.

import.io only support functions in XPath when they return a node list

Answer 2

Your path expression is fine, but perhaps it should be

substring(./td[3]/a[1]/@href,14)

"Does not seem to work" is not a very clear description of what is wrong. Do you get error messages? Is the output wrong? Do you have any code surrounding the path expression you could show?

---

You can use substring, but using substring-after() would be even better.

substring-after(/a/@href,'=')

assuming as input the tiny snippet you have shown:

<a href="page.php?var=12345"/>

will select

12345

and taking into account the structure of your input

substring-after(./td[3]/a[1]/@href,'=')

A leading . in a path expression selects only immediate child td nodes of the current context node. I trust you know what you are doing.