scrapy.Selector

An instance of :class:`Selector` is a wrapper over response to select certain parts of its content. ``response`` is an :class:`~scrapy.http.HtmlResponse` or an :class:`~scrapy.http.XmlResponse` object that will be used for selecting and extracting data. ``text`` is a unicode string or utf-8 encoded text for cases when a ``response`` isn't available. Using ``text`` and ``response`` together is undefined behavior. ``type`` defines the selector type, it can be ``"html"``, ``"xml"`` or ``None`` (default). If ``type`` is ``None``, the selector automatically chooses the best type based on ``response`` type (see below), or defaults to ``"html"`` in case it is used together with ``text``. If ``type`` is ``None`` and a ``response`` is passed, the selector type is inferred from the response type as follows: * ``"html"`` for :class:`~scrapy.http.HtmlResponse` type * ``"xml"`` for :class:`~scrapy.http.XmlResponse` type * ``"html"`` for anything else Otherwise, if ``type`` is set, the selector type will be forced and no detection will occur.