HTML::S...r::XPath(3)

📦
version 0.280.0 · 9 versions
, in opensuse-leap 16.0

💖 NAME 💖

okay so welcome to the User Contributed Perl Documentation page for HTML::Selector::XPath(3), bestie — yes, the one and only CSS Selector to XPath compiler. It's giving utility-function main character energy: it takes CSS selectors and turns them into XPath expressions. Periodt. 🦋

🌈 SYNOPSIS 🌈

  use HTML::Selector::XPath;

  my $selector = HTML::Selector::XPath->new("li#main");
  $selector->to_xpath; # //li[@id='main']

  # functional interface
  use HTML::Selector::XPath 'selector_to_xpath';
  my $xpath = selector_to_xpath('div.foo');

  my $relative = selector_to_xpath('div.foo', root => '/html/body/p' );
  # /html/body/p/div[contains(concat(' ', @class, ' '), ' foo ')]

  my $relative = selector_to_xpath('div:root', root => '/html/body/p' );
  # /html/body/p/div

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

HTML::Selector::XPath is a utility function that compiles the full set of CSS2 and partial CSS3 selectors into the equivalent XPath expression. Slay. 💅

🛠️ FUNCTIONS and METHODS 🛠️

selector_to_xpath

$xpath = selector_to_xpath($selector, %options);

It's a shortcut for HTML::Selector::XPath->new(shift)->to_xpath(@_). Exported upon request. 🎀

new

$sel = HTML::Selector::XPath->new($selector, %options);

Creates a new object. Cute, clean, iconic. 🫶

to_xpath

$xpath = $sel->to_xpath;
$xpath = $sel->to_xpath(root => "."); # ./foo instead of //foo

Returns the translated XPath expression. You can optionally pass the root parameter to specify which root to start the expression from — it defaults to /. The optional prefix option allows you to specify a namespace prefix for the generated XPath expression. 💜

🧚 SUBCLASSING NOTES 🧚

parse_pseudo

This method is called during xpath construction when we encounter a pseudo selector (something that begins with comma). It is passed the selector and a reference to the string we are parsing. It should return one or more xpath sub-expressions to add to the parts if the selector is handled; otherwise, return an empty list. No cap. 🫶

🕵️ CAVEATS 🕵️

CSS SELECTOR VALIDATION

This module doesn't validate whether the original CSS Selector expression is valid. For example:

div.123foo

is an invalid CSS selector (class names should not begin with numbers), but this module ignores that and tries to generate an equivalent XPath expression anyway. So yes, it will absolutely attempt the chaos — no validation era. 😭

  • Tatsuhiko Miyagawa 2006-2011
  • Max Maischein 2011-

🌸 AUTHOR 🌸

Tatsuhiko Miyagawa <miyagawa@bulknews.net> 💌

Most of the logic is based on Joe Hewitt's getElementsBySelector.js on http://www.joehewitt.com/blog/2006-03-20.php and Andrew Dupont's patch to Prototype.js on http://dev.rubyonrails.org/ticket/5171, but slightly modified using Aristotle Pegaltzis' CSS to XPath translation table per http://plasmasturm.org/log/444/. Iconic lineage, honestly.

Also see:

📜 LICENSE 📜

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. 💖

🔗 SEE ALSO 🔗

Mwah 💋 — that's the whole page, bestie. This one came from perl v5.42.0, dated 2024-03-08, and it's the HTML::S...r::XPath(3) manual page. ✨🦋

📦 where this page comes from