Python xpath not working?

Question

Okay, this is starting to drive me a little bit nuts. I\'ve tried several xml/xpath libraries for Python, and can\'t figure out a simple way to get a stinkin\' \"title\" element

Answer 1

It is indeed the namespaces. It was a bit tricky to find in the lxml docs, but here's how you do it:

from lxml import etree
doc = etree.parse(open('index.html'))
doc.xpath('//default:title', namespaces={'default':'http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom'})

You can also do this:

title_finder = etree.ETXPath('//{http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom}title')
title_finder(doc)

And you'll get the titles back in both cases.