I have this code for xpath and html:
<a class="WatchButton inicon" rel="nofollow" data-productid="111124">
xpath=/html/body/div[2]/div[2]/div/div[2]/div[1]/div[1]/div[2]/div[8]/a
How can I get the data-productid value?
Just add #data-productid to the xpath expression:
/html/body/div[2]/div[2]/div/div[2]/div[1]/div[1]/div[2]/div[8]/a/#data-productid
Note that the xpath expression you have is very fragile since it depends on a bunch of elements and their relevant positions. Try to rely on the element's attributes or one of it's containers - look for id and class attributes. For example:
//a[contains(#class, "WatchButton")]/#data-productid
This gets the first link anywhere on a page that contains WatchButton class and retrieves it's data-productid attribute value.
* Sharing the link to the web page or showing the complete HTML could help to provide you with a more reliable xpath expression.
Related
I need to detect via xpath an element (image with href) but i know a part of href only
This is the html
<img src="//user/banners/16/08/1614708.gif" alt="AAA" data-tip="BBB" currentitem="false" class="" width="468" height="60">
I know the id 123456 (part of href)
I tried this xpath that recognize element with a part of href but working in text link only
xpath=//a[contains(#href, "123456")]
How can i detect the element using a part of href only ?
I need xpath only please.
You need get /img in //a where href attribute contains() or ends-with() your id
This is XPATH that you need. At least i would use this XPATH in this situation
//a[ends-with(#href, 'your-id-here')]/img
You can use regular expresions. Something like
driver.find_element_by_xpath("//input[starts-with (#name,'Tut')]")
or as you described
driver.find_element_by_xpath("//input[contains(#name,'sel')]").
Be awere of one thing, do not use double quotes, for the string you are searching as atribute value. Use a single quote like I previously described.
I have the below dom structure:
<h3 class="popover-title">
<div class="popup-title">
<div class="title-txt">Associated Elements  (5)</div>
</div>
</h3>
I am trying to write an xpath which will identify the title "Associated Elements" under h3 tag.
When my xpath is
//div[contains(#class, popover)]//h3[contains(.,'Associated Elements')]
the element is identified.
However when my xpath is
//div[contains(#class, popover)]//h3[contains(text(),'Associated Elements')]
the element is not identified.
As per my understanding the dot(.) is a replacement for text(), but then why does it not identify the element when I use the text() function.
However, for another dom structure:
<h3 class="popover-title">
<a class="btn-popover" href="#">x</a>
"Associated Elements"
</h3>
The xpath :
//div[contains(#class, popover)]//h3[contains(text(),'Associated Elements')]
&
//div[contains(#class, popover)]//h3[contains(.,'Associated Elements')]
works fine.
Can someone please explain the behaviour of dot(.) under both these scenarios?
Is there a better way to write an xpath that holds good for both the exmaples? Please suggest.
As selenium is tagged so this answer would be based on xpath-1.0 and the associated XML Path Language (XPath) Version 1.0 specifications.
contains(string, string)
The function boolean contains(string, string) returns true if the first argument string contains the second argument string, and otherwise returns false. As an example:
//h3[contains(.,'Associated Elements')]
Text Nodes
Character data is grouped into text nodes. As much character data as possible is grouped into each text node. The string-value of a text node is the character data. A text node always has at least one character of data. In the below example, text() selects all text node children of the context node:
//h3[text()='Associated Elements']
In your usecase, within the HTML the text Associated Elements  (5) have which is alternatively referred to as a fixed space or hard space, NBSP (non-breaking space) used in programming to create a space in a line that cannot be broken by word wrap. Within HTML, allows you to create multiple spaces that are visible on a web page and not only in the source code.
Analyzing your code trials
Your first code trial with:
//h3[contains(.,'Associated Elements')]
locates the element as it successfully identifies with partial text Associated Elements
Your second code trial with:
//h3[contains(text(),'Associated Elements')]
fails as the element contains some more characters e.g. in addition to the text Associated Elements.
Reference
You can find a couple of relevant discussions in:
How to locate the button element using Selenium through Python
What does contains(., 'some text') refers to within xpath used in Selenium
While fetching all links,Ignore logout link from the loop and continue navigation in selenium java
The text() in contains(text(),'Associated Elements') is a selector that matches all of the text nodes that are children of the context node - it returns a node-set. That node-set is converted to string and passed to the contains() function.
text() isn't a function but a node test. It is used to select all text-node children of the context node. So, if the context node is an element named x, then text() selects all text-node children of x.
When you use contains(., 'Associated Elements') only an individual text node is passed to the function and it is able to uniquely match the text.
Note: copied and edited from this and this post.
I'm trying to get an xpath so I can click a link as per href below:
<div id="viewIFL" style="">
<div class="moneycentrallink">
Track your cash in one place with
Money Central
</div>
</div>
When I use the below in ChroPath:
//a[contains(text(),'Money Central')]
It returns 2 elements matching for xpath="1" and xpath="2".
I then tried:
//a[contains(text(),'Money Central') and #xpath='2']
and at first it resolved to just 1 element found but when I tried searching again it returned 0 elements found. Also this does not work via Selenium either (returns unable to find element).
Any ideas what's going on and how I can find the unique xpath to clickable element? Thanks
Don't use xpath attribute in your xpath as ChroPath adds the xpath attribute in element to tell the user what is matching occurrence of that element. For example- If ChroPath added xpath=5 i.e. this element is the 5th for the corresponding xpath.
For your scenario, please inspect the element and see what ChroPath gives the relative xpath.
Also you can try //div[contains(text(),'Track your cash')]//a[contains(text(),'Money Central')]
Your problem is badly formulated.
There is always a unique path to an element of the form *[1]/*[4]/*[1]/*[2]. The problem is that this path isn't very useful because it only works if you know exactly what is in the document, and if you knew exactly what was in the document, you wouldn't need XPath to find it.
So you're actually looking for an XPath that will work on a set of possible documents in which some parts are known (fixed) and others are unknown (variable). To find an XPath that works on every document in that set, you need to define what is known and what is unknown. Looking at one sample document isn't going to tell you that.
Consider this xpath which should always return one element.
//div[#id='MyDiv123']/div[contains(#class, 'super')]
Assume that we won't add anymore divs whose class is super. Given that info, I don't think that it is a good idea to use /div[contains(#class, 'super')]because the xpath will break if div[contains(#class, 'super')] is placed inside another element.
Shouldn't we be using //div[contains(#class, 'super')] instead ?
I don't like using XPaths for locators that can be written as a CSS selector. I think it's much simpler as
#MyDiv123 > div.super
or just
div.super
if it's unique on the page.
XPath contains() is a string match. All the elements below will match your XPath locator but none of them will match the CSS selectors above.
<div class="super-duper" ...>
<div class="superior" ...>
<div class="abcsuperdef" ...>
... you get the idea...
There is no defined Best Practices while writing xpaths. It all boils down to how effective xpath can be written.
I don't see any issue with the xpath as :
//div[#id='MyDiv123']/div[contains(#class, 'super')]
Of-coarse there ca be some improvements as follows :
As an enduser you won't be sure how the class attribute super impacts the HTML or which elements have this attribute. So in that case to identify the WebElement uniquely it would be wise to include the ancestor <div> tag with id as MyDiv123.
But it doesn't looks like the classname super can be dynamic. Hence you can avoid the keyword contains within the xpath and rewrite it as :
//div[#id='MyDiv123']/div[#class='super']
I have html like
<html>
<body>
<div class='open'>
<h1>Title</h1>
<div>Opened</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>
And in my Selenium WebDriver 3 tests I am trying to select the div.open element using the following xpath:
//h1/../.[contains(#class, 'open')]
In the following command in c#:
driver.FindElement(By.XPath("//h1/../.[contains(#class, 'open')]"));
Which results in
OpenQA.Selenium.InvalidSelectorException : invalid selector:
Unable to locate an element with the xpath expression //h1/../.[contains(#class, 'open')] because of the following error::
Failed to execute 'evaluate' on 'Document': The string '//h1/../.[contains(#class, 'open')]' is not a valid XPath expression.
Searching by the same Xpath in Firefox console successfully locates the element.
Any ideas why WebDriver considers this xpath invalid?
Note: my example is of course simplified
I would say that's probably down to the specification doesn't explicitly state whether predicate after abbreviated step i.e . and .. should be allowed, neither the specification ever mention an example involving predicate after abbreviated step.
So some XPath implementations just don't support it. One of these, I noticed, is XPath implementation in .NET framework. Other implementations explicitly disallow it, and even provide useful suggestion for the user to replace . or .. in their XPath with the equivalent unabbreviated expression, in order, self::node() or parent::node(), for example, the implementation used by xpathtester. But as you noticed, other implementations might support it.
As of workaround, there are many alternatives XPath which equivalent or close enough to you original attempted XPath. The easiest is to expand the . to its unabbreviated expression, as I mentioned above. Personally, I prefer not to go down the tree and then back up to return a parent element, if possible. Instead, just stop at the parent element which we want to return, and check for the child in predicate :
//*[contains(#class, 'open')][h1]
If you want to reference "div" with respect to "h1" tag then you can change the xpath to following:
//h1/ancestor::div[contains(#class, 'open')]
Instead of //h1/../.[contains(#class, 'open')] xpath can you try //div[#class='open'] xpath