# Parsel

Parsel is a BSD-licensed Python library to extract data from HTML, JSON, and XML documents.

It supports:

- CSS and XPath expressions for HTML and XML documents

- JMESPath expressions for JSON documents

- Regular expressions

Find the Parsel online documentation at https://parsel.readthedocs.org.

Example (open online demo):

    >>> from parsel import Selector
    >>> text = """
    ... <html>
    ...     <body>
    ...         <h1>Hello, Parsel!</h1>
    ...         <ul>
    ...             <li><a href="http://example.com">Link 1</a></li>
    ...             <li><a href="http://scrapy.org">Link 2</a></li>
    ...         </ul>
    ...         <script type="application/json">{"a": ["b", "c"]}</script>
    ...     </body>
    ... </html>"""
    >>> selector = Selector(text=text)
    >>> selector.css("h1::text").get()
    'Hello, Parsel!'
    >>> selector.xpath("//h1/text()").re(r"\w+")
    ['Hello', 'Parsel']
    >>> for li in selector.css("ul > li"):
    ...     print(li.xpath(".//@href").get())
    ...
    http://example.com
    http://scrapy.org
    >>> selector.css("script::text").jmespath("a").get()
    'b'
    >>> selector.css("script::text").jmespath("a").getall()
    ['b', 'c']

## Parsel Documentation Contents

Contents:

- Installation
- Usage
  - Learning expression languages
  - Using selectors
  - Command-Line Interface Tools
  - Examples
  - Similar libraries
- API reference
  - parsel.csstranslator
  - parsel.selector
  - parsel.utils
- History
  - 1.11.0 (2026-01-29)
  - 1.10.0 (2024-12-16)
  - 1.9.1 (2024-04-08)
  - 1.9.0 (2024-03-14)
  - 1.8.1 (2023-04-18)
  - 1.8.0 (2023-04-18)
  - 1.7.0 (2022-11-01)
  - 1.6.0 (2020-05-07)
  - 1.5.2 (2019-08-09)
  - 1.5.1 (2018-10-25)
  - 1.5.0 (2018-07-04)
  - 1.4.0 (2018-02-08)
  - 1.3.1 (2017-12-28)
  - 1.3.0 (2017-12-28)
  - 1.2.0 (2017-05-17)
  - 1.1.0 (2016-11-22)
  - 1.0.3 (2016-07-29)
  - 1.0.2 (2016-04-26)
  - 1.0.1 (2015-08-24)
  - 1.0.0 (2015-08-22)
  - 0.9.6 (2015-08-14)
  - 0.9.5 (2015-08-11)
  - 0.9.4 (2015-08-10)
  - 0.9.3 (2015-08-07)
  - 0.9.2 (2015-08-07)
  - 0.9.1 (2015-08-04)
  - 0.9.0 (2015-07-30)

## Indices and tables

- Index

- Module Index

- Search Page