CODEWITHSUNDEEP
regexperlxpathseleniumapostrophe
CColin
CColin

Reputation: 149

How do I escape an apostrophe in my XPath text query with Perl and Selenium?

I have an XPath query which needs to match some text in a span attribute, as follows:

my $perl_query = qq(span[text\(\)='It's a problem']);

$sel->click_ok($perl_query);

Where the text has no apostrophe there is no problem.

I've tried the following instead of 'It's a problem':

'It\'s a problem'
'It&apos\;s a problem'
'It\${apos}s a problem'  #some thread on Stackoverflow suggested that this was a solution implemented by Selenium, but it doesn't work.

Any ideas?

On a different note, if I can't solve this, I'd be happy enough matching 'a problem' but not sure how to do regex matching in XPath with Selenium.

Thanks for any pointers

Upvotes: 12

Views: 12069

Answers (7)

ashley
ashley

Reputation: 567

It's an XPath problem rather than the Perl problem.

The problem was discussed and answered here in great detail: http://kushalm.com/the-perils-of-xpath-expressions-specifically-escaping-quotes (broken link; check the WayBack Machine archive here)

In a nutshell, modify your xquery to assemble the quote-containing string using concat()

my $perl_query = qq(span[text\(\)=concat("It","'","s a problem"]);

Upvotes: 4

Esther Jesurum
Esther Jesurum

Reputation: 1

The solution to escaping apostrophes in xpath string literals is to double the apostrophe, e.g. qq(span[text()='It''s a problem'])

Upvotes: 0

Aditya
Aditya

Reputation: 67

Well the post is quite old. But here goes my working answer for those who still come wandering around looking for escaping single apostrophe and unable to find proper answer.

Text = It's a problem

Solution xpath = //div[text()=\"It's a problem\"]

or

Solution xpath = //div[contains(text(),\"It's a\")]

Upvotes: 1

Oliver
Oliver

Reputation: 61

I just had the same problem and google didn't give me a satisfied solution.

I tried to substring this: value=' - ending with an Apostrophe.

My XPath that works look like:

"substring-after(., concat('value=', ''''))"

So four Apostrophes in a row.

Upvotes: 2

Zaid
Zaid

Reputation: 37136

Consider breaking up your string if possible:

my $spanValue = q/text()='It's a problem'/;
my $perlQuery = qq/span[$spanValue]/;

# $perlQuery = span[text()='It's a problem']

Upvotes: 0

mob
mob

Reputation: 118595

A couple of suggestions; hopefully at least one of them will work:

my $perl_query = qq!span[text()='It\\'s a problem']!;
my $perl_query = qq!span[text()="It's a problem"]!;

Upvotes: 2

Ned Batchelder
Ned Batchelder

Reputation: 375484

Is it possible that the actual text on the web page is a curly quote and not a straight apostrophe? Also, you may have extra space at the beginning and end of the span, so that the strict equality against your string won't match.

Upvotes: 0

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