Could CSS selectors, with a few minor extensions, be just as good at XPath for this kind of thing?
I guess a lot of the reason I find xpath frustrating is my usage frequency corresponds exactly to the time needed to forget the syntax and have to relearn/refresh it in my head.
If CSS selectors needed only a few enhancements to compete with XPath, it might be worth enhancing a selector library to enable quick ramp up speed for more web people.
> If CSS selectors needed only a few enhancements to compete with XPath
You may want to try ParslePy, it combines CSS/XPath functionality, allowing you to declaratively specify the selector paths in a JSON file.
I just made a PR to allow YAML over JSON, but not sure if Pip picked up on it yet.
It appears this is based on that cssselect library mentioned above, compiling CSS selectors to XPath. That is, performance should approximate XPath, while convenience should be higher.
I guess a lot of the reason I find xpath frustrating is my usage frequency corresponds exactly to the time needed to forget the syntax and have to relearn/refresh it in my head.
If CSS selectors needed only a few enhancements to compete with XPath, it might be worth enhancing a selector library to enable quick ramp up speed for more web people.