Xpath: select div that contains class AND whose specific child element contains text

Question

With the help of this SO question I have an almost working xpath:

//div[contains(@class, 'measure-tab') and contains(., 'someText')]

However this gets two divs: in one it's the child td that has someText, the other it's child span.

How do I narrow it down to the one with the span?

<div class="measure-tab">
  <!-- table html omitted -->
  <td> someText</td>
</div>

<div class="measure-tab">  <-- I want to select this div (and use contains @class)
  <div>
    <span> someText</span>  <-- that contains a deeply nested span with this text
  </div>
</div>

YOu need to post input xml atleast a part of what you want to write xpath for ? — SomeDude, Aug 14 '16 at 13:52
That's what I thought, but then I get "no matching nodes" in FirePath validator — Andrejs, Aug 14 '16 at 13:59
@SamiKuhmonen - Close. It would be ` and contains(div/span, 'someText')]` — Daniel Haley, Aug 14 '16 at 14:08

score 147 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:18

147

To find a div of a certain class that contains a span at any depth containing certain text, try:

//div[contains(@class, 'measure-tab') and contains(.//span, 'someText')]

That said, this solution looks extremely fragile. If the table happens to contain a span with the text you're looking for, the div containing the table will be matched, too. I'd suggest to find a more robust way of filtering the elements. For example by using IDs or top-level document structure.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:18

Community

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answered Aug 14 '16 at 14:08

nwellnhof

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Screen-scraping is always by its nature pretty fragile. – Michael Kay Aug 14 '16 at 16:10
is there any way to select an element whose child's class contains specific text? – oldboy May 16 '21 at 09:54

score 26 · Answer 2 · edited Sep 10 '17 at 16:41

26

You can use ancestor. I find that this is easier to read because the element you are actually selecting is at the end of the path.

//span[contains(text(),'someText')]/ancestor::div[contains(@class, 'measure-tab')]

edited Sep 10 '17 at 16:41

DowntownDev

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answered Feb 06 '17 at 22:57

Alex Payne

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More info on "axes" (of which ancestor is one): https://www.w3schools.com/xml/xpath_axes.asp – AnorZaken Mar 09 '22 at 09:53

SomeDude · Answer 3 · 2016-08-14T14:20:19.543

20

You could use the xpath :

//div[@class="measure-tab" and .//span[contains(., "someText")]]

Input :

<root>
<div class="measure-tab">
  <td> someText</td>
</div>
<div class="measure-tab">
  <div>
    <div2>
       <span>someText2</span>
   </div2>
  </div>
</div>
</root>

Output :

    Element='<div class="measure-tab">
  <div>
    <div2>
      <span>someText2</span>
    </div2>
  </div>
</div>'

edited Aug 14 '16 at 14:20

answered Aug 14 '16 at 14:09

SomeDude

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That would select the span and not the div. – Daniel Haley Aug 14 '16 at 14:11
I thought OP wanted `span` – SomeDude Aug 14 '16 at 14:12
1

I tried to make it as explicit as possible with the <-- comment :) – Andrejs Aug 14 '16 at 14:13

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Aug 14 '16 at 14:10

3

You can change your second condition to check only the span element:

...and contains(div/span, 'someText')]

If the span isn't always inside another div you can also use

...and contains(.//span, 'someText')]

This searches for the span anywhere inside the div.

answered Aug 14 '16 at 14:10

Sami Kuhmonen

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Accepting nwellnhof's answer as he got it first, but +1 for the alternative. cheers. – Andrejs Aug 14 '16 at 14:14

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered May 24 '23 at 00:48

0

You can simply do it this way:

//div[contains(text(),'someText')][@class='measure-tab']

This XPath expression will select all div elements in the DOM that contain the text 'someText' and have a class attribute with the value 'measure-tab'.

answered May 24 '23 at 00:48

I.sh.

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Xpath: select div that contains class AND whose specific child element contains text

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