Capturing a text/title on the webpage using Selenium WebDriver - selenium

Question

I am attempting to capture a text (title for different panels on a webpage) and verify the text content. I tried using the xpath to capture the text, but surprisingly on WebDriver, it fails. The same xpath seems to work perfectly fine with the Selenium RC. I wonder why WebDriver does not seem to recognize the xpath while RC does!! The code I have tried is given below:
assertEquals("Identification requests", driver.findElement(By.xpath("//span[8]")).getText());
I also tried the complete xpath:
assertEquals("Identification requests", driver.findElement(By.xpath("html/body/div[2]/div[2]/div/div/div[1]/div/div[2]/div[2]/div/div/kibana-panel/div/div[1]/div[2]/div/span[8]")).getText());
I attempted using the class variable too, but none of these seem to be returning any results. All the attempts fail with an error that the element was not found.
The html code for that portion is as shown below:
<span class="panel-text panel-title ng-binding">Identification requests</span>
The HTML code surrounding the span portion mentioned above is as shown below:
<div class="row-fluid panel-extra">
<div class="panel-extra-container">
<span class="extra row-button" ng-show="panel.editable != false && panel.removable != false">
<span class="extra row-button" ng-hide="panel.draggable == false">
<span class="row-button extra" ng-show="panel.editable != false">
<span class="row-button extra ng-scope" ng-show="task.show" ng-repeat="task in panelMeta.modals">
<span class="row-button extra ng-scope" ng-show="task.show" ng-repeat="task in panelMeta.modals">
<span class="row-button extra ng-scope" ng-show="task.show" ng-repeat="task in panelMeta.modals">
<span class="row-button extra" ng-show="panelMeta.loading == true" style="display: none;">
<span class="panel-text panel-title ng-binding">Identification requests</span>
</div>
</div>
</div>
I have doubts about why the xpath that works for RC wouldn't work for WebDriver. And how I would be able to capture the text?

Answer 1

I would recommend the following (use css selector):
String spanCssSelector ="span.panel-text.panel-title.ng-binding";
WebElement spanItem=driver.findElement(By.cssSelector(spanCssSelector));
String textObtained= spanItem.getText().trim();
assertEquals(textObtained,"Identification requests");
Hope this works for you.

Answer 2

You can use assert
assertEquals("Identification requests", driver.findElement(By.xpath("//span[starts-with(#class, 'panel-text')]")).getText());
Or
assertEquals("Identification requests", driver.findElement(By.xpath("//span[#class='panel-text panel-title ng-binding']")).getText());
Or just findElement via text() function of Xpath:
driver.findElement(By.xpath("//span[starts-with(#class, 'panel-text')][text()='Identification requests']));
Or via full class attribute value:
driver.findElement(By.xpath("//span[#class='panel-text panel-title ng-binding'][text()='Identification requests']));