How to locate the element using Selenium and xpath?

Question

How to locate the element:

<input type="text" placeholder="Enter Area / Locality" class="" value="">

I tried:

//input[@placeholder='Enter Area / Locality']

but it is not working.

I want to send keys at this placeholder from selenium code.

Answer 1

I don't see any issue with your code trial. As an alternative you can use the following xpath based Locator Strategy:

//input[@placeholder=\"Enter Area / Locality\"]"

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However, ideally as it is an <input> element and you want to invoke click() on it, you need to use elementToBeClickable() and you can use either of the following Locator Strategies:

• cssSelector:

  new WebDriverWait(driver, 10).until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(By.cssSelector("input[placeholder='Enter Area / Locality']"))).click();
  

• xpath:

  new WebDriverWait(driver, 10).until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(By.xpath("//input[@placeholder='Enter Area / Locality']"))).click();