Web Scraping using XPath and Python

web_scraping.ipynb

{
 "cells": [
  {
   "cell_type": "markdown",
   "metadata": {},
   "source": [
    "# Web Scraping using XPath and Python\n",
    "\n",
    "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XPath\n",
    "\n",
    "https://www.w3schools.com/xml/xpath_syntax.asp\n",
    "\n",
    "https://codebeautify.org/Xpath-Tester\n",
    "\n",
    "> XPath is a query language for selecting nodes from an XML document.\n",
    "\n",
    "> The XPath language is based on a tree representation of the XML document, and provides the ability to navigate around the tree, selecting nodes by a variety of criteria\n",
    "\n",
    "![](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richi_Nayak/publication/220283573/figure/fig2/AS:393948813119490@1470936124247/An-XML-Document-X-Movie-its-tree-representation-T-Movie.png)\n",
    "\n",
    "![](http://web.simmons.edu/~grabiner/comm244/weekfour/tree.gif)\n",
    "\n",
    "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_the_Marvel_Cinematic_Universe"
   ]
  },
  {
   "cell_type": "code",
   "execution_count": 1,
   "metadata": {},
   "outputs": [],
   "source": [
    "from lxml import html\n",
    "import requests"
   ]
  },
  {
   "cell_type": "code",
   "execution_count": 2,
   "metadata": {},
   "outputs": [],
   "source": [
    "url = \"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_the_Marvel_Cinematic_Universe\""
   ]
  },
  {
   "cell_type": "code",
   "execution_count": 3,
   "metadata": {},
   "outputs": [],
   "source": [
    "resp = requests.get(url)"
   ]
  },
  {
   "cell_type": "code",
   "execution_count": 4,
   "metadata": {},
   "outputs": [],
   "source": [
    "tree = html.fromstring(resp.content)"
   ]
  },
  {
   "cell_type": "code",
   "execution_count": 5,
   "metadata": {},
   "outputs": [],
   "source": [
    "elements = tree.xpath('//*[@id=\"mw-content-text\"]/div/table[2]/tbody/tr[*]/th/i/a')"
   ]
  },
  {
   "cell_type": "code",
   "execution_count": 6,
   "metadata": {},
   "outputs": [],
   "source": [
    "base_url = \"https://en.wikipedia.org\""
   ]
  },
  {
   "cell_type": "code",
   "execution_count": 7,
   "metadata": {},
   "outputs": [],
   "source": [
    "links = [base_url + element.attrib['href'] for element in elements]"
   ]
  },
  {
   "cell_type": "code",
   "execution_count": 8,
   "metadata": {},
   "outputs": [
    {
     "data": {
      "text/plain": [
       "['https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Man_(2008_film)',\n",
       " 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incredible_Hulk_(film)',\n",
       " 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Man_2',\n",
       " 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_(film)',\n",
       " 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_America:_The_First_Avenger',\n",
       " 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Avengers_(2012_film)',\n",
       " 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Man_3',\n",
       " 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor:_The_Dark_World',\n",
       " 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_America:_The_Winter_Soldier',\n",
       " 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardians_of_the_Galaxy_(film)',\n",
       " 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avengers:_Age_of_Ultron',\n",
       " 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant-Man_(film)',\n",
       " 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_America:_Civil_War',\n",
       " 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Strange_(2016_film)',\n",
       " 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardians_of_the_Galaxy_Vol._2',\n",
       " 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man:_Homecoming',\n",
       " 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor:_Ragnarok',\n",
       " 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther_(film)',\n",
       " 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avengers:_Infinity_War',\n",
       " 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant-Man_and_the_Wasp',\n",
       " 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Marvel_(film)',\n",
       " 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avengers:_Endgame',\n",
       " 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man:_Far_From_Home']"
      ]
     },
     "execution_count": 8,
     "metadata": {},
     "output_type": "execute_result"
    }
   ],
   "source": [
    "links"
   ]
  },
  {
   "cell_type": "code",
   "execution_count": null,
   "metadata": {},
   "outputs": [],
   "source": []
  }
 ],
 "metadata": {
  "kernelspec": {
   "display_name": "Python 3",
   "language": "python",
   "name": "python3"
  },
  "language_info": {
   "codemirror_mode": {
    "name": "ipython",
    "version": 3
   },
   "file_extension": ".py",
   "mimetype": "text/x-python",
   "name": "python",
   "nbconvert_exporter": "python",
   "pygments_lexer": "ipython3",
   "version": "3.6.7"
  }
 },
 "nbformat": 4,
 "nbformat_minor": 2
}

Thank you kindly, Sir! This has been something I've wanted to learn how to do for quite a while!