Selenium and XPath - locating a link by containing text

Question

I'm trying to use XPath to find an element containing a piece of text, but I can't get it to work....

WebElement searchItemByText = driver.findElement(By.xpath("//*[@id='popover-search']/div/div/ul/li[1]/a/span[contains(text()='Some text')]"));

If I remove the last bit with the "contains" thing, it locates my span element, but I need to select it based on the text contents. It's not going to be a perfect match of 'Some text' either, because it might contain truncated strings as well.

What is the issue?

Bearce

You should show the HTML of the a element (and it's surrounding elements) so we can compare it's structure to what your XPath follows. – Espresso

Answer 1

I think the problem is here:

[contains(text()='Some text')]

To break this down,

1. The [] are a conditional that operates on each individual node in that node set -- each span node in your case. It matches if any of the individual nodes it operates on match the conditions inside the brackets.
2. text() is a selector that matches all of the text nodes that are children of the context node -- it returns a node set.
3. contains is a function that operates on a string. If it is passed a node set, the node set is converted into a string by returning the string-value of the node in the node-set that is first in document order.

You should try to change this to

[text()[contains(.,'Some text')]]

1. The outer [] are a conditional that operates on each individual node in that node set text() is a selector that matches all of the text nodes that are children of the context node -- it returns a node set.

2. The inner [] are a conditional that operates on each node in that node set.

3. contains is a function that operates on a string. Here it is passed an individual text node (.).

Equimolecular

slight change in topic, can this work for class too? [contains(class()='Some class')] – Mcconaghy

We need more answers like this, not just "try this" answers. – Meridethmeridian

Thx Peter, could be just me but 10 years ago it was a lot more stimulating to write better answers on this site imo – Equimolecular

tried [text()[contains(.,'Some text')]] and it is not working... – Atomics

Answer 2

Use this

//*[@id='popover-search']/div/div/ul/li[1]/a/span[contains(text(),'Some text')]

OR

//*[@id='popover-search']/div/div/ul/li[1]/a/span[contains(.,'Some text')]

Disciple

Thanks! Went with the first one :) – Bearce

Answer 3

@FindBy(xpath = "//button[@class='btn btn-primary' and contains(text(), 'Submit')]") private WebElementFacade submitButton;

public void clickOnSubmitButton() {
    submitButton.click();
}   

Undersized

Answer 4

This is working for me;

By.xpath("//span[contains(text(), 'Your Text')]")

Atomics

Answer 5

Use:

@FindBy(xpath = "//span[@class='y2' and contains(text(), 'Your Text')] ") 
private WebElementFacade emailLinkToVerifyAccount;

Undersized