CODEWITHSUNDEEP
seleniumxpath
Menelaos
Menelaos

Reputation: 26599

Selenium Xpath: Can Store Label but not Span

I have the following piece of HTML on a page:

        <li class="underline group">
          <label class="p-left">P</label><span class="p-right">1111</span>
        </li>

The following selenium commands work fine:

<tr>
    <td>storeText</td>
    <td>//li[2]/label</td>
    <td>tmp</td>
</tr>
<tr>
    <td>echo</td>
    <td>${tmp}</td>
    <td></td>
</tr>

The following should work but doesn't:

<tr>
    <td>storeText</td>
    <td>//li[2]/span</td>
    <td>tmp</td>
</tr>
<tr>
    <td>echo</td>
    <td>${tmp}</td>
    <td></td>
</tr>

The only solution I have found is //li[2]/span[@class='p-right'] but is this the case? Why doesn't //li[2]/span work by default?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 292

Answers (2)

LarsH
LarsH

Reputation: 28004

The first thing I would look for is, is there an earlier //li[2]/span in the document, before the <li class="underline group">...<span> that you're looking for, and the earlier span doesn't have the class="p-right", and also has no text content? So ${tmp} is given the text value of that first selected //li[2]/span, and not the one you're trying to select? That would explain the results you're seeing, including your observation that //li[2]//span also "does not work." Have you tried evaluating //li[2]/span in a browser debugger to see which <span> it selects first?

If that doesn't expose an explanation ... Unfortunately it's come up a few times in my experience that Selenium doesn't quite implement the XPath spec correctly. I don't know why and I agree it's frustrating. However, I think it's helpful to know that it's likely a problem with Selenium in this case, rather than a faulty understanding of XPath on your part.

If you don't find an explanation like the one outlined in the first paragraph, you'll likely have to settle for a workaround. Thankfully, you have already found a workaround in this case, using //li[2]/span[@class='p-right'].

Upvotes: 1

Matthias
Matthias

Reputation: 318

Please try //li[2]//span, that should do it.

Upvotes: 0

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