Question

What XPath query could I use to solve the below. I’m actually using nokogiri (in ruby) so ideally the answer would be in the form of a ruby nokogiri form, but else just XPath and I can adapt in.

Required Output

I’m seeking to parse the below HTML (a full html page, but I’ve just copy/pasted the relevant part for clarity), and end up with basically the following:

Phone Number   Plan ID
545454545      12345
3434343434     67890

So in the context of Ruby/nokogiri this could be in a Hash for example:

% result = { "545454545" => "12345",  "3434343434" => "67890" }

HTML to be Parsed

.
.
.
<form method="post">
   <div style='line-height:18px;background-color:#FFFFFF;border: 1px #dedede solid;padding:10px;'>
   <table width='90%' border=0>
      <tr>
         <td width='30%'> Plan ID </td>
         <td width='70%'> 12345 </td>

      </tr>
      <tr>
         <td> Phone Number </td>
         <td> 545454545 </td>
      </tr>
      .
      .
      .
      </table>
   </div>
   <br>
   .
   .
   .
   <div style='line-height:18px;background-color:#FFFFFF;border: 1px #dedede solid;padding:10px;'>
   <table width='90%' border=0>
      <tr>
         <td width='30%'> Plan ID </td>
         <td width='70%'> 67890 </td>

      </tr>
      <tr>
         <td> Phone Number </td>
         <td> 3434343434 </td>
      </tr>
      .
      .
      .
      </table>
   </div>
   <br>

Answer 1

Assuming those lines you’ve replaced with periods do not contain data you want to collection, which would mean each table provided a unique result set, the following would work:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

require 'nokogiri'

doc = Nokogiri.HTML DATA.read
results = {}

doc.search('table').each do |table|
  plan_id = table.at('tr[1]/td[2]')
  phone_number = table.at('tr[2]/td[2]')

  if plan_id && phone_number
    results[phone_number.text.strip] = plan_id.text.strip
  end
end

p results #=> {"545454545"=>"12345", "3434343434"=>"67890"}

__END__
<form method="post">
   <div style='line-height:18px;background-color:#FFFFFF;border: 1px #dedede solid;padding:10px;'>
   <table width='90%' border=0>
      <tr>
         <td width='30%'> Plan ID </td>
         <td width='70%'> 12345 </td>

      </tr>
      <tr>
         <td> Phone Number </td>
         <td> 545454545 </td>
      </tr>
      .
      .
      .
      </table>
   </div>
   <br>
   .
   .
   .
   <div style='line-height:18px;background-color:#FFFFFF;border: 1px #dedede solid;padding:10px;'>
   <table width='90%' border=0>
      <tr>
         <td width='30%'> Plan ID </td>
         <td width='70%'> 67890 </td>

      </tr>
      <tr>
         <td> Phone Number </td>
         <td> 3434343434 </td>
      </tr>
      .
      .
      .
      </table>
   </div>
   <br>