python爬虫xpath出来空值,Python爬虫没有找到特定的Xpath

I asked my previous question here:

This worked and i managed to see the number i wanted in a firefox plugin called xpath checker. the results show below.

so I know i can find this number with this xpath, but when trying to run a python scrpit to find and save the number it says it cannot find it.

try:

views = browser.find_element_by_xpath("//div[@class='video-details-inside']/table//span[@class='added-time']/preceding-sibling::text()")

except NoSuchElementException:

print "NO views"

views = 'n/a'

pass

I no that pass is not best practice but i am just testing this at the moment trying to find the number. I'm wondering if i need to change something on the end of the xpath like .text as the xpath checker normally shows a results a little differently. Like below:

i needed to use the xpath i gave rather than the one used in the above picture because i only want the number and not the date. You can see part of the source in my previous question.

Thanks in advance! scratching my head here.

解决方案

The xpath used in find_element_by_xpath() has to point to an element, not a text node and not an attribute. This is a critical thing here.

The easiest approach here would be to:

get the td's text (parent)

get the span's text (child)

remove child's text from parent's

Code:

span = browser.find_element_by_xpath("//div[@class='video-details-inside']/table//span[@class='added-time']")

td = span.find_element_by_xpath('..')

views = td.text.replace(span.text, '').strip()