document.evaluate(XPath) in IE.au3 ?

[4ggr35510n]

Greetings!

I'm currently trying to reach some data in HTML pages threw XPath expressions. Works fine with FF.au3... But what about IE.au3?

I were trying to figure it out using this XML DOM wrapper, but apparently HTML has not many to do with XML...

Could anyone help me figure it out?

How to get node values from html document using xpath in InternetExplorer UDF?

I'll appreciate your help!

Best Regards,

4gr

[PsaltyDS]

I think XPath is only parsed by special javascript included with the page, or an added plug-in, not by the native IE engine itself.

Others my know better.

Edit: Here's at least one Googled reference with the same opinion: XPath in Javascript, Part 3:

In my previous two posts, I talked about the DOM Level 3 XPath Javascript implementation available in Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera. Internet Explorer as of version 8 still hasn’t implemented this feature set, but it does have some support for XPath. Unlike the other browsers, Internet Explorer’s XPath functionality is available on XML documents and can’t be used on the document object.

Edited September 17, 2010 by PsaltyDS

[GMK]

What kind of data are you trying to access? For example, if you're trying to access an input by value, you could use the following:

$oInputs = _IETagNameGetCollection($oIE, "input")
For $oInput In $oInputs
    If $oInput.value = "Click Me" Then _IEAction($oInput, "click")
Next

Edited September 17, 2010 by GMK

[4ggr35510n]

THANK YOU both for you answers!

I'm noob about this and I'm googling terms like a blind man, confusing concepts etc., but...

I think XPath is a DOM standard, and a DOM standard is present both in HTML and XML.

Here W3C writes in "Select Nodes" paragraph about xmlDoc.selectNodes(xpath); technique in InternetExplorer, instead of xmlDoc.evaluate() present in Firefox/Opera/Chrome.

Here is something in MSDN about it, but I have no idea how to connect this with IE.object :|

$object.document.SelectNodes("//div")

PsaltyDS:

According to info you got, I should use 'SelectNodes' on XML object (which, apparently, as Dale said via PM, isn't $object.document). In further searches I've found THIS W3C page, telling about document object property "xml", that returns xml content of html document. But...

$object.document.xml.SelectNodes("//div") fails too, similar as $object.document.xml itself!

Anyone knows how to make it work? :/

GMK:

I'm familiar with *GetCollection, yet it doesn't meet my needs

Edited September 17, 2010 by 4ggr35510n

[DaleHohm]

See this post about xpath not being integrated even in IE9 http://blog.brett-zamir.me/?p=169

IE Selector API might help you, but I have discounted it for my work since it requires the document you use it on to opt into the IE8 compliance mode... yeah right. The api uses the methods .querySelectorAll and .querySelector

Dale

[4ggr35510n]

From link you've pasted (thank you for this):

Nothing is changing here for IE9; if you want to use XPATH, you’ll need to use MSXML.

There is MSXML UDF on this forum... But is there any way to convert HTML document to XML in autoit?

Edited September 20, 2010 by 4ggr35510n

[DaleHohm]

No, not in any meaningful way I can think of.

Perhaps if you shre info on exactly what you are trying to accomplish there may be some approach that can be suggested.

Dale

[dhaley77]

Maybe you could use BeautifulSoup with AutoIt to get the functionality you need?