Selenium locator xpath not working for particular button - selenium

Question

I'm looking for a working locator to address a button on a web page.
"Inspecting element" in the code I see :
<input class="ruButton ruBrowse" tabindex="-1" value="Select & Upload File" style="border: 0px dotted;" type="button">
Copying outerhtml I have :
<input tabindex="-1" value="Select & Upload File" class="ruButton ruBrowse" style="border: 0px dotted;" type="button">
I tried the following as xpath locators but these are not OK - I'd like to understand why :
//input[#value='Select & Upload File']
//input[#value='Select & Upload File']
This locator is OK :
driver.findElement(By.xpath("//input[contains(#class,'ruButton ruBrowse') and contains(#type,'button')]")).click();
More details on error log :
1)
driver.get(baseUrl);
driver.findElement(By.xpath("//input[contains(#value,'Select') and contains (#value,'Upload File')]")).click();
Exception in thread "main" org.openqa.selenium.NoSuchElementException: Unable to find element with xpath == //input[contains(#value,'Select') and contains(#value,'Upload File')] (WARNING: The server did not provide any stacktrace information)
Command duration or timeout: 297 milliseconds
For documentation on this error, please visit: http://seleniumhq.org/exceptions/no_such_element.html
Build info: version: 'unknown', revision: '1969d75', time: '2016-10-18 09:43:45 -0700'
System info: host: 'BGC-W7X64T-2082', ip: '10.119.137.75', os.name: 'Windows 7', os.arch: 'x86', os.version: '6.1', java.version: '1.8.0_112'
Driver info: org.openqa.selenium.ie.InternetExplorerDriver
Capabilities [{browserAttachTimeout=0, ie.enableFullPageScreenshot=true, enablePersistentHover=true, ie.forceCreateProcessApi=false, ie.forceShellWindowsApi=false, pageLoadStrategy=normal, ignoreZoomSetting=false, ie.fileUploadDialogTimeout=3000, version=11, platform=WINDOWS, nativeEvents=true, ie.ensureCleanSession=false, elementScrollBehavior=0, ie.browserCommandLineSwitches=, requireWindowFocus=false, browserName=internet explorer, initialBrowserUrl=http://localhost:2351/, javascriptEnabled=true, ignoreProtectedModeSettings=false, enableElementCacheCleanup=true, unexpectedAlertBehaviour=dismiss}]
Session ID: 4613c6bf-239c-4ccb-b3b3-f1946276e7c7
*** Element info: {Using=xpath, value=//input[contains(#value,'Select') and contains(#value,'Upload File')]}
at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(Unknown Source)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance(Unknown Source)
at org.openqa.selenium.remote.ErrorHandler.createThrowable(ErrorHandler.java:216)
at org.openqa.selenium.remote.ErrorHandler.throwIfResponseFailed(ErrorHandler.java:168)
at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.execute(RemoteWebDriver.java:635)
at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.findElement(RemoteWebDriver.java:368)
at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.findElementByXPath(RemoteWebDriver.java:473)
at org.openqa.selenium.By$ByXPath.findElement(By.java:361)
at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.findElement(RemoteWebDriver.java:360)
at Selenium_And_AutoIt.main(Selenium_And_AutoIt.java:61)
2)
driver.get(baseUrl);
driver.findElement(By.xpath("//input[#value='Select & Upload File']")).click();
Exception in thread "main" org.openqa.selenium.NoSuchElementException: Unable to find element with xpath == //input[#value='Select & Upload File'] (WARNING: The server did not provide any stacktrace information)
Command duration or timeout: 281 milliseconds
For documentation on this error, please visit: http://seleniumhq.org/exceptions/no_such_element.html
Build info: version: 'unknown', revision: '1969d75', time: '2016-10-18 09:43:45 -0700'
System info: host: 'BGC-W7X64T-2082', ip: '10.119.137.75', os.name: 'Windows 7', os.arch: 'x86', os.version: '6.1', java.version: '1.8.0_112'
Driver info: org.openqa.selenium.ie.InternetExplorerDriver
Capabilities [{browserAttachTimeout=0, ie.enableFullPageScreenshot=true, enablePersistentHover=true, ie.forceCreateProcessApi=false, ie.forceShellWindowsApi=false, pageLoadStrategy=normal, ignoreZoomSetting=false, ie.fileUploadDialogTimeout=3000, version=11, platform=WINDOWS, nativeEvents=true, ie.ensureCleanSession=false, elementScrollBehavior=0, ie.browserCommandLineSwitches=, requireWindowFocus=false, browserName=internet explorer, initialBrowserUrl=http://localhost:21427/, javascriptEnabled=true, ignoreProtectedModeSettings=false, enableElementCacheCleanup=true, unexpectedAlertBehaviour=dismiss}]
Session ID: eb3f9de0-2fc1-41ce-8f15-6947f956c216
*** Element info: {Using=xpath, value=//input[#value='Select & Upload File']}
at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(Unknown Source)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance(Unknown Source)
at org.openqa.selenium.remote.ErrorHandler.createThrowable(ErrorHandler.java:216)
at org.openqa.selenium.remote.ErrorHandler.throwIfResponseFailed(ErrorHandler.java:168)
at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.execute(RemoteWebDriver.java:635)
at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.findElement(RemoteWebDriver.java:368)
at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.findElementByXPath(RemoteWebDriver.java:473)
at org.openqa.selenium.By$ByXPath.findElement(By.java:361)
at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.findElement(RemoteWebDriver.java:360)
at Selenium_And_AutoIt.main(Selenium_And_AutoIt.java:60)
Thank you !

Answer 1

For what it's worth, I've had trouble in the past with using text that has ampersand(s) inside as well. My solution is to use contains instead of "=" and only provide part of the value text, however, this might not be sufficient since there could conceivably be some other element that contains "Upload File" for example. My solution in this case, assuming that the locator as-is is incorrect, would be the following locator:
//input[contains(#value,'Select') and contains(#value,'Upload File')]
it could also substitute the 'contains' with 'starts-with' and 'ends-with' correspondingly.