$ pip install --user parsel

# optional: for --browser flag support optional dependency is required:
$ pip install --user "parsel[browser]"

# optional: for better --embed install ipython:
$ pip install --user ipython

$ parsel "https://github.com/granitosaurus/parsel-cli"

# help command is always there to show available commands and processor flags
> help
Commands:
--help                   print help
--reset                  reset session processors
--embed                  embed repl
--info                   show context info
--css                    switch to css input
--xpath                  switch to xpath input
--open                   open current url in web browser
--view                   open current doc in web browser
--vi                     toggle input to/from vi mode
--fetch                  request new url
Processors:
--first, -1              take only 1st value
--pretty, -p             pretty format html
--slice, -[              take slice
--re                     filter values by regex or if capture groups are present return them
--sum                    sum all values if possible
--repr, -r               represent output (e.g. show newline chars)
--len, -l                return total length
--strip, -s              strip away trailing chars
--absolute, -a           turn relative urls to absolute ones
--collapse, -c           collapse single element lists
--join, -j               join results
--join-with, -J          join results with specified character
-n                       take n-th element

# css selector support
> h1::text
['\n    ', '\n  ', '\n  ', '\n  ', '\n\n  ', '\n', 'About parselcli']

# css selectors with inline processors
> h1::text --join --strip 
About parselcli

# or short form inline processors
> h1::text -js
About parselcli

# or session processors
> --join --strip
active processors: [Join(' '), Strip]
> h1::text
About parselcli

# switching to xpath
> --xpath
switched to xpath
> //h1/text()
About parselcli

Usage: parsel [OPTIONS] URL

  Interactive shell for css and xpath selectors

Options:
  -h TEXT                         request headers, e.g. -h "user-agent=cat
                                  bot"
  --xpath                         start in xpath mode instead of css
  --browser                       use browser emulator
  --browser-headless              use headless browser emulator
  --browser-wait [load|domcontentloaded|networkidle|none]
                                  wait for browser page to reach some state
  --browser-wait-css TEXT         wait for browser page to render until css
                                  selector appears
  --browser-wait-xpath TEXT       wait for browser page to render until xpath
                                  selector appears
  -c TEXT                         compile css and return it
  -x TEXT                         compile xpath and return it
  -i TEXT                         initial input
  --cache                         cache requests
  --no-color                      disable html output colors
  --vi-mode                       enable vi-mode for input
  --config TEXT                   config file  [default:
                                  /home/dex/.config/parsel.toml]
  --embed                         start in embedded python shell
  -v                              verbosity level
  --shell [ipython|ptpython|bpython|python]
                                  preferred embedded shell; default auto
                                  resolve in order
  --help                          Show this message and exit.

$ parsel "https://github.com/granitosaurus/parsel-cli"                                                               
> --help                                                                                                              
Commands:
--help                   print help
--embed                  embed repl
--info                   show context info
--css                    switch to css input
--xpath                  siwtch to xpath input
--open                   open current url in web browser
--view                   open current doc in web browser
--fetch                  request new url
Processors:
--first, -1              take only 1st value
--len, -l                return total length
--strip, -s              strip away trailing chars
--absolute, -a           turn relative urls to absolute ones
--collapse, -c           collapse single element lists
--join, -j               join results
--join-with, -J          join results with specified character
-n  <number>             take n-th element

> --fetch "http://some-other-url.com"
requesting "http://some-other-url.com"
> --view
opening document in browser

> h1::text --first
# will take first element

> --first
default processors: [First]
# will process every following command with new processors

# input on parsel launch - usually used to enable session processors
initial_input = [ "--collapse --strip"]
# whether input coloring is enabled 
color = True
# whether input is in vi mode
vi_mode = False
# where prompt toolkit history is located
history_file_css = "/home/user/.cache/parsel/history_css"
history_file_xpath = "/home/user/.cache/parsel/history_xpath"
history_file_embed = "/home/user/.cache/parsel/history_embed"

[requests]
# when using --cache flag for using cached responses
cache_expire = 86400
# where sqlite cache file is stored for cache
cache_file = "/home/user/.cache/parsel/requests.cache"

[requests.headers]
# here headers can be defined for requests to avoid bot detection etc.
User-Agent = "parselcli web inspector"
# e.g. chrome on windows use
# User-Agent = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/62.0.3202.94 Safari/537.36"