How to find the right xpath for Google sheets?

Question

I would like to scrape data from a page, but cannot figure out the right xpath for Google sheets. I would like to extract the number 202 from https://www.belvilla.nl/zoeken/?land=nl&rgo=frie (on top of the page, "202 vakantiehuizen gevonden in Friesland")

If I take the xpath, I get: //*[@id="result-container-items"]/div[1]/div/div/div[1]/div[1]/div[1]/strong

In Google sheets I have tried =IMPORTXML(A1;"//*[@id="result-container-items"]/div[1]/div/div/div[1]/div[1]/div[1]/strong)") and some others like =IMPORTXML(A1;"//div[@class='search-numbers']"), but none of them are working. For the last one I get an error with 'Resource with URL content has exceeded the size limit.' but I'm guessing my xpath is wrong.

Can anyone help me out? Thanks!

See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/64172780/importxml-resource-at-url-contents-exceeded-maximum-size regarding the error you received from Google Sheets — David Denenberg, Jul 02 '21 at 17:55

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited Jul 02 '21 at 20:15

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google sheets do not support the scraping of JavaScript elements. you can check this if you disable JS for a given URL and you will be left with content you could import. in your case, this cant be achieved with IMPORTXML:

edited Jul 02 '21 at 20:15

DisappointedByUnaccountableMod

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answered Jul 02 '21 at 19:37

player0

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NightEye · Accepted Answer · 2021-07-02T22:28:16.270

IMPORTXML has its limitations especially on JS elements. However, if scripting is an option, try using UrlFetchApp.fetch() in Google Apps Script.

Code:

function fetchUrl(url) {
  var html = UrlFetchApp.fetch(url).getContentText();
  // startString and endString must be unique or at least the first result 
  // enclosing the result we want
  var startString = 'search-result-div" ';
  var endString = 'alternate-dates-filter-bar';
  var startIndex = html.search(startString);
  var endIndex = html.search(endString);
  // regex for numbers and text content
  var numbers = /strong>([^<]+)<\/strong/;
  var text = /span>([^<]+)<\/span/;
  // clean content then combine matches of numbers and text
  var content =  html.substring(startIndex, endIndex).replace(/\s\s+/g, ' ');
  var result = numbers.exec(content)[1] + ' ' + text.exec(content)[1];
  return result.trim();
}

Output:

Note:

Code above is specific to what you are fetching. You will need to update the script processing of the response if you want anything else.
You can reuse this on other url and will fetch the similar value located on your wanted xpath in your post.
This doesn't make use of the xpath.

How to find the right xpath for Google sheets?

2 Answers2

Code:

Output:

Note: