How to locate element by partial onclick attribute with single quote in the value?

Question

<div style="padding: 4px 15px; background-color: rgb(212, 208, 200); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" onmouseover="hl(this,true);" onmouseout="hl(this,false);" onclick="select_menu('1','doc_107094');">Download...</div></div>

I'm trying to click the onclick event and match until select_menu('1' with code

FindElement(By.XPath("//div[starts-with(@onclick 'select_menu('1'')]"));

and my error

OpenQA.Selenium.InvalidSelectorException: 'Given xpath expression "//div[starts-with(@onclick 'select_menu('1'')]" is invalid: SyntaxError: The expression is not a legal expression.'

Answer 1

Use escaped double quotes around the onclick value

FindElement(By.XPath("//div[starts-with(@onclick, \"select_menu('1'\")]");

Answer 2

This error message...

OpenQA.Selenium.InvalidSelectorException: 'Given xpath expression "//div[starts-with(@onclick 'select_menu('1'')]" is invalid: SyntaxError: The expression is not a legal expression.'

...implies that the xpath expression was not a valid one.

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Reason

When dealing with xpath the ( and ' characters are part of the xpath syntax. So you need to exclude them or escape them.

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Solution

To locate element by partial onclick event attribute you can use the following xpath based Locator Strategies:

• xpath using starts-with():

  FindElement(By.XPath("//div[starts-with(@onclick, 'select_menu')]"));
  

• xpath using starts-with() and contains():

  FindElement(By.XPath("//div[starts-with(@onclick, 'select_menu') and contains(@onclick, 'doc')]"));
  

• xpath using the entire value within onclick event:

  FindElement(By.XPath("//div[@onclick=\"select_menu('1','doc_107094');\"]"));