Hpricot Elements

(Part of An Hpricot Showcase.)

Searching a Set of Elements

at( expression, &block )

Find a single element which matches the CSS or XPath expression. If a block is given, the matching element is passed to the block and the original set of Elements is returned.

 doc.search("div.entryPermalink").at("a")

The above returns the first link found among all the div.entryPermalink elements.

search( expression, &block )

Finds all elements which match the CSS or XPath expression. If a block is given, the matching elements are passed to the block, in turn, and the original set of Elements is returned.

 doc.search("div.entryPermalink").search("a") do |link|
   pp link
 end.search("span") do |span|
   pp span
 end

The above searches first for all links in div.entryPermalink elements, then for all span tags in div.entryPermalink elements.

Altering All Elements in a Set

append( html_string )

Add HTML from html_string within each element, to the end of each element’s content.

 doc.search("div.entryPermalink").append(" » " + Time.now)

The above adds a timestamp just inside the end of each div.entryPermalink element.

prepend( html_string )

Add HTML from html_string with each element, to the beginning of each element’s content.

 doc.search("a[@href]").prepend("<h1>Link</h1>")

The above adds a heading just inside the beginning of each link.

wrap( html_string )

Wraps each element in the set inside the element created by html_string. If more than one element is found in the html_string, Hpricot locates the deepest spot inside the first element.

 doc.search("a[@href]").wrap(%{<div class="link"><div class="link_inner"></div></div>})

This code wraps every link on the page inside a div.link and a div.link_inner nest.

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