I am new to selenium coding, and I am seeing several xpaths that contain (.,'followed by something') what does the ., refer to?
The . character within the xpath is the short form of text()
As an example if an WebElement is represented within the DOM Tree as:
<span>Use this payment method</span>
Effective Locator Strategies will be:
xpath 1:
//span[text()='Use this payment method']
xpath 2:
//span[contains(., 'Use this payment method')]
Reference
You can find a couple of relevant discussions in:
How to locate the button element using Selenium through Python
While fetching all links,Ignore logout link from the loop and continue navigation in selenium java
How does dot(.) in xpath to take multiple form in identifying an element and matching a text
Related
Selenium FindElement:
driver.FindElement(By.XPath($"//*[contains(text(), '{text}')]"));
Throws:
no such element: Unable to locate element:
{
"method":"xpath",
"selector":"//*[contains(text(), '269424ae-4d74-4a68-91e0-1603f2d674a0')]"
}
(Session info: chrome=74.0.3729.169)
(Driver info:
chromedriver=74.0.3729.6 (255758eccf3d244491b8a1317aa76e1ce10d57e9-refs/branch-heads/3729#{#29}),
platform=Linux 4.18.0-20-generic x86_64)
But it's definitely there and the xpath is valid because I can use AngleSharp to parse the driver's page source with the same xpath expression:
new HtmlParser()
.ParseDocument(driver.PageSource)
.SelectSingleNode($"//*[contains(text(), '{text}')]");
The target element is a div containing a guid:
<div class="home-project-title-text"> 269424ae-4d74-4a68-91e0-1603f2d674a0 </div>
This is with
dotnet core 2.2
chrome webdriver
Chrome 74
Ubuntu 18.04
EDIT1
Interestingly the document.evaluate in the browser console also fails with this xpath expression. I use this as a helper function for running xpath:
selectSingle = xpath => document.evaluate(xpath, document).iterateNext()
and then find that this returns null:
> selectSingle("//*[contains(text(), '269424ae-4d74-4a68-91e0-1603f2d674a0')]")
> null
but it's definitely there and has the expected text, e.g. I can use a different xpath expression to manually locate and check it's text content:
> selectSingle("//*[#id='app']/div/div[1]/div[3]/div/div[1]/div/div[1]/div")
.textContent
.trim()
== "269424ae-4d74-4a68-91e0-1603f2d674a0"
> true
EDIT2
So the cause was that the div was being created in react like this:
React.createElement(
"div",
{className = "home-project-title-text"},
" ",
"269424ae-4d74-4a68-91e0-1603f2d674a0",
" ");
I think this roughly means that the div has three textnodes as children (is that valid?). The result looks 100% normal - it renders perfectly and inspecting the element with devtools looks like a single text node and .textContent returns the concatenated string.
Now that you gave some more information (how this element is created):
Yes, it is possible that an XML element has as its children several separate text nodes. However, this is usually not the case if the text nodes are adjacent to each other, instead of separated by child elements.
If '269424ae-4d74-4a68-91e0-1603f2d674a0' is indeed the second text node, then
//*[contains(text(), '269424ae-4d74-4a68-91e0-1603f2d674a0')]
will indeed not return this div element. You should not think of this as "breaking XPath", it is just that the precise semantics of the expression are:
Find an element with any name whose first text node contains '269424ae-4d74-4a68-91e0-1603f2d674a0'.
text() actually selects all text nodes of an element, but XPath functions such as contains() silenty select only the first one.
What you actually would like to select is
an element with any name where any text node contains '269424ae-4d74-4a68-91e0-1603f2d674a0'
And an expression to achieve exactly that is:
//*[text()[contains(.,'269424ae-4d74-4a68-91e0-1603f2d674a0')]]
You can test those expressions with a small toy document such as:
<div className="home-project-title-text">
<other/>
269424ae-4d74-4a68-91e0-1603f2d674a0
<other/>
</div>
Where other elements are forcing the div element to contain three separate text nodes, two of them containing whitespace only.
Finally, if you already know that the element you are looking for is a div, then you should look specifically for that:
//div[text()[contains(.,'269424ae-4d74-4a68-91e0-1603f2d674a0')]]
It might be the case the element lives in an iframe, if this is the case - you will have to use IWebDriver.SwitchTo() function in order to switch to the required iframe prior to attempting locating the element.
It might be the case the element is not immediately available, i.e. it's being loaded by an AJAX request, in that case you will need to use WebDriverWait class so Selenium could wait till the element appears in DOM prior to interacting with it.
Try the following xpath.See if you get any luck.
//div[#class='home-project-title-text'][contains(.,'269424ae-4d74-4a68-91e0-1603f2d674a0')]
EDIT
//div[contains(.,'269424ae-4d74-4a68-91e0-1603f2d674a0')]
I am facing an issue where I am unable to locate Element on webpage with any type of locator expect Absolute xpath. Here are details:
URL : https://semantic-ui.com/modules/dropdown.html#selection
Required Element Screen shot:
Manually created Xpath Screen shot( Please note that I am able to recognize Element in web application with manually created xpath but Same xpath is not working in selenium code)
But Same xpath is not working in selenium script.
PLEASE NOTE THAT I AM ABLE TO IDENTIFY SAME OBJECT WITH Absolute xpath
Please help to me to understand reason for this.
Here is code:
public static WebDriver driver;
public static void main(String[] args) {
driver= new FirefoxDriver();
driver.manage().window().maximize();
driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(10, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
driver.get("https://semantic-ui.com/modules/dropdown.html");
//Selection
driver.findElement(By.xpath("//div[#class='ui selection dropdown upward']")).click();
driver.findElement(By.xpath("//div[#class='menu transition visible']/div[text()='Female']")).click();
System.out.println("Done");
This may be issue with your first x-path. You may try the following code. It may work.
driver.findElement(By.xpath("//div[#class='ui selection dropdown']").click();
driver.findElement(By.xpath("//div[#class='menu transition visible']/div[text()='Male']").click();
You are missing a preceding wildcard in you driver.FindElement XPath.
Instead of driver.findElement(By.xpath("//div..."));, do driver.findElement(By.xpath("//*div..."));.
Currently, what your code is doing is telling the XPath locator to find a first level div (not easily possible, as the first item is almost always the document body), but the wildcard of "*" tells it that it can look for the div at any level.
As an aside, please edit your answer up top with actual code instead of pictures so others with the same problem can find their solution easier.
Longshot:
You are using Chrome to look at the source, but Selenium is using Firefox.
There is a chance that the source is rendered differently between the two browsers. Specifically, your xpath is relying on an exact match of class. I do know that FireFox is notorious for modifying source output.
I haven't done any testing but I would not be surprised if the class is in a different order and it's failing on an exact match.
There are two solutions if that is the case:
Don't do a single exact match (xpath = "") but instead do a mix of contains joined with && (contains ui && contains selection && dropdown)
Don't rely on the output from the console tab. Instead "View Page Source" and view what is actually being sent instead of what is being interpreted by the browser
Find the dropdown container element firstly, then use it to find self descendant, like option etc.
driver.get("https://semantic-ui.com/modules/dropdown.html");
// find dropdown container element
WebElement dropdownWrapper = driver.findElement(
By.xpath("//div[#class='html']/div[input[#name='gender']]"));
// expand drop down options by click on the container element
dropdownWrapper.click();
// or click the down arrow
dropdownWrapper.findElement(By.css('i')).click();
// select option
dropdownWrapper.findElement(By.xpath(".//div[text()='Female']")).click();
To locate the element with text as Gender and select the option Female you can use the following Locator Strategy :
Code Block :
System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.driver", "C:\\path\\to\\geckodriver.exe");
WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();
driver.get("https://semantic-ui.com/modules/dropdown.html#selection");
driver.findElement(By.xpath("//div[#class='another dropdown example']//div[#class='ui dropdown selection']")).click();
driver.findElement(By.xpath("//div[#class='another dropdown example']//div[#class='ui dropdown selection active visible']//div[#class='menu transition visible']//div[#class='item' and contains(.,'Female')]")).click();
System.out.println("Gender Female selected.");
Console Output :
Gender Female selected.
This might be helpful to clearify how selectors are working in general:
.(dot): Dot at starting represents the current node. It tells us that the processing will start from the current node.
. .(double dot): It will select parent of current node. For example, //table/. . will return div element because div is the parent of table element.
‘*’: is used to select all the element nodes descending from the current node. For example:
/table/*: It will select all child elements of a table element.
//*: It will select all elements in the document.
//*[#id = ‘username’]: It will select any element in document which has an attribute named “id” with the specified value “username”.
#: It represents an attribute which selects id, name, className, etc. For example:
#id: It will select all elements that are defined with the id attribute in the document. No matter where it is defined in the document.
//img/#alt: It will select all the img elements that are defined with the #alt attribute.
//td[#*]: It will select all td elements with any attribute.
Here is a link to the article:
https://www.scientecheasy.com/2020/07/selenium-xpath-example.html/
I have used most of the element locators while testing with Selenium, but very low frequently used the 'TagName' locator. Please give an example.
Now supposing, a software web element does not have any ID or Class Name, then how can we locate that element in Selenium WebDriver? The answer is there are many alternatives of the Selenium WebDriver element locators and one of them is locating an element by tag name.
Locating an element by tag name is not too much popular because in most of cases, we will have other alternatives of element locators. But yes, if there is not any alternative then you can use the element's DOM tag name to locate that element in webdriver.
Here you can select the tagname as a locator like:
// Locating the element by tagName and store its text in variable 'dropdown'.
String dropdown = driver.findElement(By.tagName("select")).getText();
Thanks to the deprecation of By.tagName you should use By.css for Shah's answer...
String dropdown = driver.findElement(By.css("select")).getText();
We use the actual name of the tag like <a> for anchor and <table> for table and input for <input>. This helps to get all the elements with a given tag name.
Example: to select the first element of a given input
var dialog = driver.FindElement(By.ClassName("ladialog"));
var save = dialog.FindElements(By.TagName("input"))[0];
save.Click();
Also importantly, the tagName locating strategy can be used to get or fetch all the links on a webpage and print them to console. Try this:
// Get all links in a webpage
List<WebElement> allLinks = driver.findElements(By.tagName("a"));
System.out.println("Links count is: " + allLinks.size());
for(WebElement link : allLinks)
System.out.println(link.getText());
I am new to Selenium. Not sure how to handle this scenario. I am working on a website which has several buttons with following code,
<a class="Some big class name" datacommunication="SelectItem" token="some token number" model-id="Id1" element="button">
<i class="classname">Book Ticket</i>
</a>
<a class="Some big class name" datacommunication="SelectItem" token="some token number" model-id="Id2" element="button">
<i class="classname">Book Ticket</i>
</a>
I tried to click on it using following commands,
ele = driver.FindElement(By.ClassName("Some big class name")); but it fails with following message, Compound class names are not supported. Consider searching for one class name and filtering the results.
ele = driver.FindElement(By.CssSelector("a[model-id='Id1']")); fails with 'Test method TestBot.HomeTest.bookTicket threw exception:
OpenQA.Selenium.WebDriverTimeoutException: Timed out after 10 seconds'
Tried using XPATH,
ele = driver.FindElement(By.XPath("\\\a[#model-id='Id1']")); doesn't work either.
I have no control on html. Can't change it.
Please let me know how to identify elements in such scenarios.
You can't have spaces in class names. Those are actually multiple classes separated by a space. You can find the above elements using a css selector
var ele = driver.FindElements(By.CssSelector(".Some.big.class.name"))
Of course, this will find both elements. To find just the first, you could use
var ele = driver.FindElement(By.CssSelector("a[model-id='Id1']"))
You can find help on css selectors here: http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/css_selectors.asp
Update:
I just noticed your XPath appears to have the slashes the wrong way around. If you wish to use XPath, try
//a[#model-id='Id1']
Note, however, that css selectors perform better than XPath.
There are multiple number of ways to locate your WebElement in Selenium WebDriver.
But always remember all are based on you attribute or combination of HTML tags so case could be any of them
1- First way is using id
2- 2nd one is Name
3- Class Name
4- Some time you can used Tagname
5- Some time linkText
6- Some time partial link text
7- Using xpath
8- Using css selector
So in you case we need to take help of Xpath and Css Selector
So xpath of you elements
Syntax : //[#attribute ='value of selected tag']
Example
id1: //a[#model-id='Id1']
id2: //a[#model-id='Id2']
For both element following are the css Selector
Syntax [attribute ='value']
id1:
a[model-id='Id1']
id2:
a[model-id='Id2']
http://www.slideshare.net/weekendtesting/css-selector-29312437
http://www.slideshare.net/weekendtesting/locators-in-selenium-bnt-09
Thanks a lot for help. I have used following code to overcome above mentioned issue,
WebDriverWait wait = new WebDriverWait(driver, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(10));
wait.Until(ExpectedConditions.ElementIsVisible(By.CssSelector("a[data-model-id='c5']"))).Click();
With above code, I am able to click on the button.
Thanks again for your help and knowledge sharing.
Amit
You can locate by using xpath.
WebElement ele = driver.findElement(By.xpath("//*[#class='Some big class name']"));
there is difference between findElements and findElement.
FindElement: findElement returns a single element.
FindElements : returns a list of same element.As in this example there are multiple classes with same class name , so use driver.findElements method .
driver.findElements will return a list of all elements with that class name .
Now , you have list of all elements but you want only one of the element.
So iterate over list to get a single element out of a list.
List<WebElement> elementList= driver.FindElement(By.ClassName("Some.big.class.name"));
Iterator itr = elementList.iterator();
while(itr.hasNext())
{
WebElement element = itr.next();
if(element.getAttribute("model-id").equals("Id1")){
element.click();
break;
}//if block ends here
}//while loop ends here
You can also use XPATH , if nothing works
To identify the elements in selenium there are multiple ways.
To see the details please refer BY Class.
Try to find the way which can identify the element uniquely. Start with id if available and if nothing works go for XPATH. XPATH is slower than id and CSS selector.
How to select the checkbox which has a dynamically changing ID and XPath?
Multiple ways:
You should look at a pattern like id or name somoething like
CT_CHKBox_157, CT_CHK_158 etc.. For example, to click the first
Checkbox having a pattern of Ids
You can use a dynamic xpath like driver.findelement(By.xpath(//input[starts-with(#id,'CT_CHK'][1]).click()
Identify the Unique Element which are close ancestors to the
Checkbox in question and reach out to it through xpath or css path
relatively or through indexing from within.
Hope that clarifies.
Have you tried XPath by position? Ultimately the check boxes are like buttons or link that can be clicked so driver.findElement(By.xpath("//xpath by position")).click();
Alternativey you might want to use JavaScript:
((JavascriptExecutor) driver).executeScript("return document.getElementsByName('ChkboxValue')[0].checked;");
Hope this helps.
Selenium uses what is called locators to find and match the elements.There are 8 locators strategies included in Selenium:
Identifier
Id
Name
Link
DOM
XPath
CSS
UI-element
you can try using any other Locator in the list.