XPath error: [contains(text()="something")]' is not a valid XPath expression

Question

I'm building an app with selenium for the first time, after watching a very basic tutorial on XPath. The app consists in a card's prize calculator. I wrote this code:

from selenium.webdriver import Chrome
from webdriver_manager.chrome import ChromeDriverManager
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.service import Service
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By

cardmarket_url = "https://www.cardmarket.com/it/"

print("\nWhat are you searching for?\n\n")
index_product = 0
products = ["Yu-Gi-Oh", "Pokémon", "Magic", "Dragon Ball Super", "Flesh And Blood", 
            "Digimon", "Force of Will", "Final Fantasy", "World of Warcraft",
            "Star Wars Destiny", "Weiss Schwarz", "Dragoborne", "My Little Pony",
            "The Spoils"]

while (index_product <= 13):
    print(f"  [{str(index_product+1)}] - {prodotti[index_product]}")
    index_product = index_product + 1

gonext = False

while (gonext == False):
    try:
        product = products[int(input("\nInsert the product's number: "))-1]
        gonext = True
    except:
        print("You can only insert numbers beetween 1 and 14.")

print(f"\nYou selected {product}.")

if product == "Yu-Gi-Oh":
    product = "YuGiOh"
if product == "Pokémon":
    product = "Pokemon"
if product == "Force of Will":
    product = "FoW"
if product == "World of Warcraft":
    product = "WoW"
if product == "Spoils":
    product = "Spoils"

chrome_driver = ChromeDriverManager().install()
driver = Chrome(service=Service(chrome_driver))
driver.get(cardmarket_url+product.replace(" ", ""))

searched = False

while (searched == False):
    product = input("\nInsert card's name: ")
    rarity = input("Insert card's rarity: ")
    if product != "":
        searched = True
    else:
        print("Insert product's name.")

product = product+" "+rarity

driver.find_element(By.ID, "ProductSearchInput").send_keys(product)
driver.find_element(By.ID, "search-btn").click()
driver.find_element(By.XPATH, '//div[@class, "col-12 col-md-8 px-2 flex-column"]/a[contains(text()="'+product+'")]').click()

input()

Well, the penultimate line gives me this error:

Traceback (most recent call last):   File "C:\Users\Utente\OneDrive\Documenti\Progetti_Python\KivyApp\SeleniumCardFinder\CardFinder.py", line 59, in <module>
    driver.find_element(By.XPATH, '//div[@class, "col-12 col-md-8 px-2 flex-column"]/a[contains(text()="'+prodotto+'")]').click()   File "C:\Users\Utente\OneDrive\Documenti\Progetti_Python\KivyApp\kivy_venv\lib\site-packages\selenium\webdriver\remote\webdriver.py", line 857, in find_element
    return self.execute(Command.FIND_ELEMENT, {   File "C:\Users\Utente\OneDrive\Documenti\Progetti_Python\KivyApp\kivy_venv\lib\site-packages\selenium\webdriver\remote\webdriver.py", line 435, in execute
    self.error_handler.check_response(response)   File "C:\Users\Utente\OneDrive\Documenti\Progetti_Python\KivyApp\kivy_venv\lib\site-packages\selenium\webdriver\remote\errorhandler.py", line 247, in check_response
    raise exception_class(message, screen, stacktrace) selenium.common.exceptions.InvalidSelectorException: Message: invalid selector: Unable to locate an element with the xpath expression //div[@class, "col-12 col-md-8 px-2 flex-column"]/a[contains(text()="Mewtwo GX")] because of the following error: SyntaxError: Failed to execute 'evaluate' on 'Document': The string '//div[@class, "col-12 col-md-8 px-2 flex-column"]/a[contains(text()="Mewtwo GX")]' is not a valid XPath expression.   (Session info: chrome=103.0.5060.114) Stacktrace: Backtrace:
        Ordinal0 [0x00796463+2188387]
        Ordinal0 [0x0072E461+1762401]
        Ordinal0 [0x00643D78+802168]
        Ordinal0 [0x00646754+812884]
        Ordinal0 [0x00646612+812562]
        Ordinal0 [0x006468A0+813216]
        Ordinal0 [0x00671595+988565]
        Ordinal0 [0x00671B1B+989979]
        Ordinal0 [0x0069E912+1173778]
        Ordinal0 [0x0068C824+1099812]
        Ordinal0 [0x0069CC22+1166370]
        Ordinal0 [0x0068C5F6+1099254]
        Ordinal0 [0x00666BE0+945120]
        Ordinal0 [0x00667AD6+948950]
        GetHandleVerifier [0x00A371F2+2712546]
        GetHandleVerifier [0x00A2886D+2652765]
        GetHandleVerifier [0x0082002A+520730]
        GetHandleVerifier [0x0081EE06+516086]
        Ordinal0 [0x0073468B+1787531]
        Ordinal0 [0x00738E88+1805960]
        Ordinal0 [0x00738F75+1806197]
        Ordinal0 [0x00741DF1+1842673]
        BaseThreadInitThunk [0x75436739+25]
        RtlGetFullPathName_UEx [0x77068FEF+1215]
        RtlGetFullPathName_UEx [0x77068FBD+1165]

kjhughes · Answer 1 · 2022-07-09T18:16:08.597

Change

//div[@class,"col-12 col-md-8 px-2 flex-column"]/a[contains(text()="Mewtwo GX")]
            ^                                                     ^

to

//div[@class="col-12 col-md-8 px-2 flex-column"]/a[contains(text(),"Mewtwo GX")]
            ^                                                     ^

to eliminate your syntax problems, but be aware that

a[contains(text(),"Mewtwo GX")]

may not do what you're expecting. Consider instead

a[normalized-space()="Mewtwo GX"]

or

a[contains(.,"Mewtwo GX")]

depending upon whether you wish to test that the anchor text equals some text or contains a substring of some text.

XPath error: [contains(text()="something")]' is not a valid XPath expression

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