How do I parse an HTML table with Nokogiri?

Question

I installed Ruby and Mechanize. It seems to me that it is posible in Nokogiri to do what I want to do but I do not know how to do it.

What about this table? It is just part of the HTML of a vBulletin forum site. I tried to keep the HTML structure but delete some text and tag attributes. I want to get some details per thread like: Title, Author, Date, Time, Replies, and Views.

Please note that there are few tables in the HTML document? I am after one particular table with its tbody, <tbody id="threadbits_forum_251">. The name will be always the same (I hope). Can I use the tbody and the name in the code?

<table >   <tbody>     <tr>  <!-- table header --> </tr>   </tbody>   <!-- show threads -->   <tbody id="threadbits_forum_251">     <tr>       <td></td>       <td></td>       <td>         <div>           <a href="showthread.php?t=230708" >Vb4 Gold Released</a>         </div>         <div>           <span><a>Paul M</a></span>         </div>       </td>       <td>           06 Jan 2010 <span class="time">23:35</span><br />           by <a href="member.php?find=lastposter&amp;t=230708">shane943</a>          </div>       </td>       <td><a href="#">24</a></td>       <td>1,320</td>     </tr>    </tbody> </table> 

Answer 1

#!/usr/bin/ruby1.8  require 'nokogiri' require 'pp'  html = <<-EOS   (The HTML from the question goes here) EOS  doc = Nokogiri::HTML(html) rows = doc.xpath('//table/tbody[@id="threadbits_forum_251"]/tr') details = rows.collect do |row|   detail = {}   [     [:title, 'td[3]/div[1]/a/text()'],     [:name, 'td[3]/div[2]/span/a/text()'],     [:date, 'td[4]/text()'],     [:time, 'td[4]/span/text()'],     [:number, 'td[5]/a/text()'],     [:views, 'td[6]/text()'],   ].each do |name, xpath|     detail[name] = row.at_xpath(xpath).to_s.strip   end   detail end pp details  # => [{:time=>"23:35", # =>   :title=>"Vb4 Gold Released", # =>   :number=>"24", # =>   :date=>"06 Jan 2010", # =>   :views=>"1,320", # =>   :name=>"Paul M"}]