xpath not getting selected - python-2.7

Question

I have just started using Scrapy:
Here is an example of a website that I want to crawl :
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/shame
The code for my Spider :
from scrapy.spider import BaseSpider
from scrapy.http import Request
from scrapy.selector import HtmlXPathSelector
from dic_crawler.items import DicCrawlerItem
from urlBuilder import *
class Dic_crawler(BaseSpider):
name = "dic"
allowed_domains = ["www.thefreedictionary.com"]
start_urls = listmaker()[:]
print start_urls
def parse(self, response):
hxs = HtmlXPathSelector(response)
sites = hxs.select('//*[#id="MainTxt"]/table/tbody')
print 'SITES:\n',sites
item = DicCrawlerItem()
item["meanings"] = sites.select('//*[#id="MainTxt"]/table/tbody/tr/td/div[1]/div[1]/div[1]/text()').extract()
print item
return item
The listmaker() returns a list of urls to scrap.
My problem is that the sites variable comes up empty if I select till 'tbody' in the xpath and returns an empty sites variable, Whereas if I select only table I get the part of the site I want.
I am not able to retrieve the meaning for a word as a result of this into item["meanings"] since the part after tbody is does not select beyond tbody.
Also while at it, the site gives multiple meanings which I would like to extract but I only know how to extract a single method.
Thanks

Answer 1

Here's a spider skeleton to get you started:
from scrapy.spider import BaseSpider
from scrapy.http import Request
from scrapy.selector import HtmlXPathSelector
class Dic_crawler(BaseSpider):
name = "thefreedictionary"
allowed_domains = ["www.thefreedictionary.com"]
start_urls = ['http://www.thefreedictionary.com/shame']
def parse(self, response):
hxs = HtmlXPathSelector(response)
# loop on each "noun" or "verb" or something... section
for category in hxs.select('id("MainTxt")//div[#class="pseg"]'):
# this is simply to get what's in the <i> tag
category_name = u''.join(category.select('./i/text()').extract())
self.log("category: %s" % category_name)
# for each category, a term can have multiple definition
# category from .select() is a selector
# so you can call .select() on it also,
# here with a relative XPath expression selecting all definitions
for definition in category.select('div[#class="ds-list"]'):
definition_text = u'\n'.join(
definition.select('.//text()').extract())
self.log(" - definition: %s" % definition_text)