Multi tool use

XPath to pick an element based on the text in parent or any of its child

Is there a way to pick an element if that element or any one of the child has a particular text?

For example, Here are two examples:

Example 1:

<div title='Title1'>
<input type='checkbox'>
"Tag 1"
</div>


Example 2:

<div title='Title2'>
<input type='checkbox'>
<span>Tag 1<span>
</div>


I want to pick tag div regardless if the text is inside the span or not.

But the below XPath picks the tag span for the second case.

//*[(contains(text(), 'Tag 1'))]


Is there any better XPath to pick the div based on the text inside the parent or any of the child?

1 Answer
1

Is there any better XPath to pick the div based on the text inside the parent or any of the child?

Use ., not text().

.

text()

//*[contains(., 'Tag 1')]


text() does not give you the element's "text".

text()

It gives you a list (!) of text nodes that are direct children of the current context node. When the context node is <div> in example #2, that list would be three text nodes containing only whitespace. I've highlighted them with brackets:

<div>

<div title='Title2'>[
]<input type='checkbox' />[
]<span>Tag 1<span>[
]</div>


'Tag 1' is a child of <span>, not of <div>.

'Tag 1'

<span>

<div>

Now, contains() does not accept node lists. If you give it a node list, it will only consider the string value of the very first node in that list. The string value of a node is the concatenation of all text nodes it contains, not just direct children.

contains()

. refers to the context node. In example #2 that's the <div> itself. contains() again converts it to string, but this time, that string actually contains Tag 1. Another way to write this is:

.

<div>

contains()

Tag 1

//*[contains(string(.), 'Tag 1')]


That's what you thought text() would do.

text()

Now //* is recursive, this means the <div> will be selected, the <span> and all the <div> ancestors, too, because they all contain Tag 1 at some point.

//*

<div>

<span>

<div>

Tag 1

Use something more specific than //* to fix this.

//*

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