From: Michael Libby <michael.c.libby@...>
Date: 2008-12-10T07:44:35+09:00
Subject: Re: Scraping 3rd element with hpricot

On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 2:09 PM, Mark Nielsen <manielse@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> I don't know why I'm struggling with this (not a Ruby expert) but using
> the standard scraping example:
>
>  doc = Hpricot(@response)
>  puts (doc/"#{xpath}").first.inner_html
>  puts (doc/"#{xpath}").last.inner_html
>
> What could I use instead of first or last to get the nth element?

Hpricot::Doc#search returns an instance Hpricot::Elements, which is a
subclass of Array, so you can index it like any other array.

puts (doc/"#{xpath}")[n].inner_html  # we're counting from 0 here, so
to get the 3rd element n=2

However, you will get an error with this if there are not enough
elements returned by the search. So it might be better to do the
search, validate that there are as many elements as you expect and
then get the element you want by index. Like so:

puts x.inner_html if x = (doc/"#{xpath}")[n]

-Michael

-- 
Michael C. Libby
www.mikelibby.com