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POPython XPath Result displaying only []
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  1. POPython XPath Result displaying only []
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    copied!<p>Hey I have just started to use Python recently and I want to use it with a bit of xPath, the thing is when I print the result of the query I only get [] and I don't know why =S</p> <pre><code> import libxml2, urllib doc = libxml2.parseDoc(urllib.urlopen("http://www.domain.com/").read()) result = doc.xpathEval("//th//td[(((count(preceding-sibling::*) + 1) = 2) and parent::*)]//a") if result != []: print result elif result == "": print "null" else: print result doc.freeDoc() </code></pre> <p>I get no error whatsoever just a []. What could it be? also is there any better documentation for libxml2 than the one <a href="http://xmlsoft.org/html/index.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a> since I find it reaaaally confusing =S</p> <hr> <p><strong>Edit</strong></p> <p>I changed the code, so now I get more than the [] I get the following output which should be related to the non-validity of the html I'm trying to parse (but it's not mine so I can't modify it). Any ideas on to how to tell Python to be more forgiving with that fact?</p> <blockquote> <p>^ Entity: line 3552: parser error : Premature end of data in tag tr line 209</p> <p>^ Entity: line 3552: parser error : Premature end of data in tag tbody line 208</p> <p>^ Entity: line 3552: parser error : Premature end of data in tag table line 207</p> <p>^ Entity: line 3552: parser error : Premature end of data in tag input line 206</p> <p>^ Entity: line 3552: parser error : Premature end of data in tag input line 205</p> <p>^ Entity: line 3552: parser error : Premature end of data in tag form line 204</p> <p>^ Entity: line 3552: parser error : Premature end of data in tag table line 99</p> <p>^ Entity: line 3552: parser error : Premature end of data in tag div line 98</p> <p>^ Entity: line 3552: parser error : Premature end of data in tag body line 96</p> <p>^ Entity: line 3552: parser error : Premature end of data in tag html line 3</p> <p>^ Traceback (most recent call last): File "C:\Python26\lib\site-packages\libxml2.py", line 1263, in parseDoc if ret is None:raise parserError('xmlParseDoc() failed') libxml2.parserError: xmlParseDoc() failed</p> </blockquote> <p>It's actually a longer list but there's no point in placing it all here, since all errors are due to invalid html.</p>
 

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