Can't select label by text when label contains more than text

Question

I am driving myself bonkers with this.

I have three form fields in a form:

Customer: required dropdown field
Weight: required text field
Status: optional text field

Each element has that label. The required fields' labels contain a span with an asterisk.

I'm using Xpather in Chrome. When I search for this, I receive 2 results, when I should get 3:

//*[contains(text(),'t')]

This makes no sense to me At All.

Customer, which is working:

<label for='customer-field'>
  <span class='required-marker'>*</span>
  Customer
  <input id='customer-field' type='text' />
</label>

Weight, which is not working:

<label class='control-label'>
  <span id='ctl01_requiredMarker' class='required-marker'>*</span>
  Weight
</label>

Status, which is working:

<label class='control-label'>
  Status
</label>

The only workaround that works for me is removing the required marker from the Weight label container. However, that doesn't explain how "Customer" gets matched at all.

Noteworthy: I'm trying to automate testing this page, so I can't really remove that span tag.

What's going on? And/or what do I do?

score 8 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:14

8

Try changing your XPath to the following:

//*[text()[contains(.,'t')]]

The source of this fix breaks it down far better than I could've done, so refer to that for detailed explanation! I've tested it myself using the XPath Checker extension for Firefox, and it matches your three items.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:14

Community

1
1

answered Mar 04 '14 at 17:20

Tetrinity

1,105
8
20

It works!! Bless you a thousand times, this has blocked me for FOREVER. – XtinaS Mar 04 '14 at 19:39
I read the explanation from the source, and I still don't really understand it, but this did work for me, so thanks! – Eliezer Miron Dec 13 '18 at 19:28

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 04 '14 at 06:44

1

Try with the below method

driver.findElement(By.xpath("//span[@class='required-marker']/..")).getText().contains("Weight")

Please Let me know above method is working or not.

answered Apr 04 '14 at 06:44

user3487861

340
2
2

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 04 '14 at 17:14

0

I think your html is where the issue lies.

This is probably what your html should look like:

<span class='required-marker'>*
    <label for='customer-field'>Customer</label>
    <input id='customer-field' type='text' />
</span>
<span id='ctl01_requiredMarker' class='required-marker'>*
    <label class='control-label'>Weight</label>
</span>
<label class='control-label'>Status</label>

answered Mar 04 '14 at 17:14

Richard

8,961
3
38
47

This works as expected. Unfortunately, he mentioned not being able to remove the span tag, so I don't think he'll be able to use this. – Tetrinity Mar 04 '14 at 17:23
@Tetrinity Sure, but I think it's a bug in the HTML, as in the HTML itself needs to be correctly written. – Richard Mar 04 '14 at 17:37
The original HTML is all over the place, yes :) – Tetrinity Mar 04 '14 at 17:39

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 04 '14 at 17:19

Are you using Selenium or WebDriver? What does WebDriver return as a response? Also make sure you add a "." before the xpath like .//*[contains(text(),'t')]

What does this print?

List<WebElement> elements = driver.findElement(By.xpath(".//*[contains(text(),'t')]"));
s.o.p(elements.size());

Can't select label by text when label contains more than text

4 Answers4