How to read text with space in xpath

Question

I have listBox with value "This is_a_test" ( there is a space after the This )

$x('//li[contains(@class,"myClass")][text()="This is_a_test"]')

When I run it I got empty list []

I tried also

$x('//li[contains(@class,"myClass")][text()="This<b></b> <b></bis_a_test"]')

What do I need to change in my expression ?

The XML

<li .... >
"This"
<b></b>
<b></b>
"is_a_test"
</li>

The problem is just how to read space in xpath if I changed the name to This_ is_a_test then it worked — user1365697, Feb 25 '19 at 10:14
It might be because your text() is containing double quotes. try escaping it like this `$x('//li[contains(@class,"myClass")][text()="\"This\" \"is_a_test\""]')` OR `$x('//li[contains(@class,"myClass")][text()="This\" \"is_a_test"]')` — Vebbie, Feb 25 '19 at 10:38
it give me syntax error ox xpath is not a valid XPath expression. — user1365697, Feb 25 '19 at 11:06

LMC · Accepted Answer · 2019-02-26T02:40:10.303

The browser "shows" an space but in the command line you get

xmllint --html --xpath "//li[contains(@class,'myclass')]/text()" test.html
"This"


"is_a_test"

So there are 3 new lines on the result which are also part of text() output.

Removing new lines from the html, this XPath works (reversing quotes for simplicity)

echo '<li class="myclass">"This"<b></b> <b></b>"is_a_test"</li>' | \
xmllint --html --xpath "//li[contains(@class,'myclass')][.='\"This\" \"is_a_test\"']/text()" -

Result:

"This" "is_a_test"

Please note the dot . operator instead of text().
It's not easy to represent new lines on an xpath expression. Also, you may want to check this answer for more info on the difference between dot and text().

How to read text with space in xpath

1 Answers1