How to write an XPath or CSS expression?

Question

<span class="left-menu-title selectorgadget_selected" data-xpal="xpath-verify-selected" style="">Admin</span>

How can I write an XPath or CSS expression? I tried the plug-ins does not work.

If anyone knows how to click an item from the left-side bar after log-in to the site will be a great help. it does not click, the script fails.

@FindBy(xpath = "//SPAN[@class='left-menu-title'][text()='Admin']") 
WebElement clickOnAdmin;

public WebElement adminClick() {
    return clickOnAdmin;
}

Could you give the HTML or URL? – scorpion35 Jan 08 '18 at 03:10 — scorpion35, Jan 08 '18 at 03:10

alecxe · Answer 1 · 2018-01-08T17:41:49.260

4

There are multiple classes but you are checking left-menu-title only.

The case of a SPAN tag name may also be a problem depending on a driver.

Fixed version, using contains() (note that it is not an ideal class XPath check - you need the concat and normalize-space, strictly speaking):

//span[contains(@class, 'left-menu-title')][text()='Admin']

edited Jan 08 '18 at 17:41

answered Jan 08 '18 at 03:11

alecxe

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I'm quite sure that at least in Python+Selenium `//SPAN` will return the same node as `//span`... Does Selenium behaves differently in other programming languages? – Andersson Jan 08 '18 at 16:47
1

@Andersson yeah, really good point, it then depends on a driver's XPath support, updated the answer accordingly. Thanks! – alecxe Jan 08 '18 at 17:46
This is way off-topic, but you might find [this SEDE query](http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/780210/users-by-number-of-profile-trackable-badges-obtained) interesting. – E.P. Jan 09 '18 at 14:37

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 08 '18 at 03:22

what @alecxe wrote is a very good pointer.

Usually when a website has a strong front-end code embedded with data+JS, you should use functionalities. Especially when absolute xpath does not work such as your case with data var on the front-end. "data-xpal="xpath-verify-selected"

Guru99 xpath fonctionalities

also please verify if your application or website is not embedded with iFrames. if so please change iframe window.
if you can provide the stackTrace Error. I assume you are talking about NullPointerException or NotFindElementException.

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 09 '18 at 07:47

As per the HTML you have shared, the following code block must work :

@FindBy(xpath = "//span[@class='left-menu-title selectorgadget_selected' and contains(.,'Admin')]") 
WebElement clickOnAdmin;

public WebElement adminClick() {
    clickOnAdmin.click();
}

Note : As you named the function as adminClick(), assuming you want to invoke click() method on the WebElement clickOnAdmin, click() method won't return anything. hence you have to discard the return clickOnAdmin; statement as well.

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 11 '18 at 18:34

I would suggest trying writing your XPATH as //span[contains(@class,'left-menu-title') and .='Admin']

And instead of just element.click(); use javascript executor click. Like how it's below:

JavascriptExecutor executor = (JavascriptExecutor) driver;
executor.executeScript("arguments[0].click();", driver.findElement(By.xpath("//span[contains(@class,'left-menu-title') and .='Admin']")));

Hope this works for you! Let me know.

How to write an XPath or CSS expression?

4 Answers4