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css_apologist | 1 month ago

xpath is so fucking cool

i can understand why it failed for general use, but shit like this revives my excitement

q: i'm not an expert, this looks like it extends xpath syntax? haven't seen stuff like the /map is this referring to the html map element? or a fp-style map?

discuss

order

rodricios|1 month ago

I think xpath is cool too!

If wxpath can help revive some of that excitement, then I consider my project a success.

As for your question, while wxpath does extend the xpath syntax, `/map` is not one of its additions, nor is it a html map element.

XPath 3.1 introduced first-class maps (and arrays) (https://www.w3.org/TR/xpath-31/#id-maps), and `/map` is the syntax to create said structure. It's an awesome feature that's especially useful for quickly delivering JSON-like objects.

jerf|1 month ago

XPath may have "failed" for general use but it's generally well-enough supported that I can find a library in the common languages I've used when I went looking for it. In some ways the hard part is just knowing it exists so you can use it if you need it.

rodricios|1 month ago

Couldn't agree more.

I should also add that most (Python-based) web crawling and scraping frameworks support XPath engines OOTB: Scrapy, Crawlee, etc. In that sense, XPath is very much alive.