XPath Query: get attribute href from a tag

Question

I want to use XPath to get the href attribute from an a-tag, but it has two occurrences within the same file. How am I getting along? I need to che

Answer 1

For the following HTML document:

  
    Example 
    SO 
  

The xpath query /html/body//a/@href (or simply //a/@href) will return:

    http://www.example.com
    http://www.stackoverflow.com

To select a specific instance use /html/body//a[N]/@href,

    $ /html/body//a[2]/@href
    http://www.stackoverflow.com

To test for strings contained in the attribute and return the attribute itself place the check on the tag not on the attribute:

    $ /html/body//a[contains(@href,'example')]/@href
    http://www.example.com

Mixing the two:

    $ /html/body//a[contains(@href,'com')][2]/@href
    http://www.stackoverflow.com