How to identify element by text when text is spanned over multiple lines using Selenium

Question

Is it possible to write xpath using contains text such as(Below is what I want but does not work)

//ul[@role='listbox']/..//span[contains(text(),'Fast-Food Restaurent')] 

Page Code:

<span class="item-title" md-highlight-text="searchText" md-highlight-flags="i">Fast-<span class="highlight">Food</span> Restaurant</span>

It is an auto complete text box when I enter the word food, there are some options and I want to select Fast-Food Restaurant from it.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You can select required span node based on its string representation:

//span[.='Fast-Food Restaurant']

Answer 2

To identify the element you can use either of the following xpath based Locator Strategies:

• Using the texts Food and Fast:

  //ul[@role='listbox']/..//span[.//span[text()='Food']][contains(.,'Fast-')]
  

• Using the texts Food and Restaurant:

  //ul[@role='listbox']/..//span[.//span[text()='Food']][contains(.,'Restaurant')]
  

• Using the texts Food, Fast and Restaurant:

  //ul[@role='listbox']/..//span[.//span[text()='Food']][contains(.,'Fast-') and contains(.,'Restaurant')]
  

Answer 3

You can amend your path to the following:

//ul[@role='listbox']/..//span[contains(normalize-space(), 'Fast-Food Restaurant')]