From 88c92cb68b5a6f9b0c50c801f92dacc4fc0fa52a Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Daniel Collins <dacjames@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 29 Aug 2015 14:23:25 -0700
Subject: [PATCH] provide documentation for nested loaders

---
 docs/topics/loaders.rst | 54 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 54 insertions(+)

diff --git a/docs/topics/loaders.rst b/docs/topics/loaders.rst
index 8841711ea..0c20f32ef 100644
--- a/docs/topics/loaders.rst
+++ b/docs/topics/loaders.rst
@@ -432,6 +432,14 @@ ItemLoader objects
         <topics-loaders-processors>` to get the final value to assign to each
         item field.
 
+    .. method:: nested_loader(xpath=selector, css=selector)
+
+        Create a nested loader with either an xpath selector or css selector.
+        The supplied selector is applied relative to selector associated
+        with this :class:`ItemLoader`. The nested loader shares the :class:`Item`
+        with the parent :class:`ItemLoader` so calls to :meth:`add_xpath`,
+        :meth:`add_value`, :meth:`replace_value`, etc. will behave as expected.
+
     .. method:: get_collected_values(field_name)
 
         Return the collected values for the given field.
@@ -490,6 +498,52 @@ ItemLoader objects
         :attr:`default_selector_class`. This attribute is meant to be
         read-only.
 
+.. _topics-loaders-nested:
+
+Nested Loaders
+==============
+
+When parsing related values from a subsection of a document, it can be
+useful to create nested loaders.  Imagine you're extracting details from
+a footer of a page that looks something like:
+
+Example::
+
+    <footer>
+        <a class="social" href="http://facebook.com/whatever">Like Us</a>
+        <a class="social" href="http://twitter.com/whatever">Follow Us</a>
+        <a class="email" href="mailto:whatever@example.com">Email Us</a>
+    </footer>
+
+Without nested loaders, you need to specify the full xpath (or css) for each value
+that you wish to extract.
+
+Example::
+
+    loader = ItemLoader(item=Item())
+    # load stuff not in the footer
+    loader.add_xpath('social', '//footer/a[@class = "social"]/@href')
+    loader.add_xpath('email', '//footer/a[@class = "email"]/@href')
+    loader.load_item()
+
+Instead, you can create a nested loader with the footer selector and add values
+relative to the footer.  The functionality is the same but you avoid repeating
+the footer selector.
+
+Example::
+
+    loader = ItemLoader(item=Item())
+    # load stuff not in the footer
+    footer_loader = loader.nested_loader(xpath='//footer')
+    footer_loader.add_xpath('social', 'a[@class = "social"]/@href')
+    footer_loader.add_xpath('email', 'a[@class = "email"]/@href')
+    # no need to call footer_loader.load_item()
+    loader.load_item()
+
+You can nest loaders arbitrarilly and they work with either xpath or css selectors.
+As a general guideline, use nested loaders when they make your code simpler but do
+not go overboard with nesting or your parser can become difficult to read.
+
 .. _topics-loaders-extending:
 
 Reusing and extending Item Loaders