Extract Data from XPath via Google Apps Script

GetDataFromXPath

function getDataFromXpath(path, url) {
  var data = UrlFetchApp.fetch(url);
  var text = data.getContentText();
  var xmlDoc = Xml.parse(text, true);
  
  // Replacing tbody tag because app script doesnt understand.
  path = path.replace("/html/","").replace("/tbody","","g");
  var tags = path.split("/");
  Logger.log("tags : " + tags);
  // getting the DOM of HTML
  var element = xmlDoc.getElement();
  
  for(var i in tags) {
    var tag = tags[i];
    Logger.log("Tag : " + tag);
    var index = tag.indexOf("[");
    if(index != -1) {
      var val = parseInt(tag[index+1]);
      tag = tag.substring(0,index);
      element = element.getElements(tag)[val-1];
    } else {
      element = element.getElement(tag);
    }
    //Logger.log(element.toXmlString());
  }
  return element.getText() ;//+ ' [ ' + element.getAttribute("href").getValue() + ' ] ';
}

Doesn't work for /html/body/div[@Class='something']/form
Only works for /html/body/div[2]/form

// changed from original code to accept index >9
Hi ,
By changing :
line 16: var val = parseInt(tag[index+1]);
by :
var val = parseInt(tag.substring(index+1, indexend));

It accept index biger then 9 , usefull for big table.
Cheers
fred

I've been using your code and overall it works pretty fine, but I think I found a bug.
Not working for /html/body/div[5]/div[4]/div[2]/div[2]/div/div/div[1]/div[1] in Link
TypeError: Cannot call method "getElements" of undefined. (line 21).
It should show just the title of the challenge. I just copy-pasted the xpath using firefox.

Greetings.
Luis.

I've improved this a little bit by allowing regex matching for these indexes.

• It starts by removing any html from the xpath, since that'll be the first element we send, basically
• This works when going from a root element (html in this case) to any element inside of the DOM. Does not work with going back one level. If I happen to need it in my project, I might update this with that logic as well.
• Since you can provide any element to it, you can pass in an XPath relative to that element to the child/ren you want

Hope this helps.

function getElementByXPath(element, xPath) {
  var path = xPath.replace(/\/?html\//gi,'');
  var tokens = path.split("/");
  var _element = element;
    
  try {
    for(var i in tokens) {
      var token = tokens[i];
      var hasIndex = token.indexOf("[") !== -1;
      if(hasIndex) {
        var match = token.match(/(\w+)\[(\d+)\]/i); // attempts to extract the tag name and the idex from the token
        var tag = match[1];
        var index = match[2]; // index is 1-based
        _element = _element.getChildren(tag)[index - 1];
      } else {
        _element = _element.getChild(token);
      }
    }
  } catch(e) {}
  return _element;
}

It's showing XML is not defined. Can someone help me with this immediately?

@mananchawla8 I think XML has changed to XmlService . but the script doesn't work btw.
https://developers.google.com/apps-script/reference/xml-service

yea this code snippet does not work any more. Which is not surprising giving that it was published 9 years ago