CODEWITHSUNDEEP
seleniumselenium-webdriverxpathwebdriverxpath-1.0
Bastian
Bastian

Reputation: 1237

Difference between contains and equals in XPath - selenium

Hey All I gave a question regarding xpath locator in selenium. I have a test that if I use the next code:

locator = By.xpath("//div[@class='ant-notification-notice ant-notification-notice-closable ng-trigger ng-trigger-notificationMotion']");`

everything is working since I user "class="

However if I change it and use contains :

locator = By.xpath("//div[contains(@class, 'ant-notification-notice ant-notification-notice-closable ng-trigger ng-trigger-notificationMotion')]");

I get 

ERROR: no such element: Unable to locate element: {"method":"xpath","selector":"//div[contains(@class, 'ant-notification-notice ant-notification-notice-closable ng-trigger ng-trigger-notificationMotion')]"}

I do not understand what is the difference, and why If I use contains it not find.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1611

Answers (1)

undetected Selenium
undetected Selenium

Reputation: 193208

The xpath as:

//div[@class='ant-notification-notice ant-notification-notice-closable ng-trigger ng-trigger-notificationMotion']

is checking @class attribute values lexically for the string:

ant-notification-notice ant-notification-notice-closable ng-trigger ng-trigger-notificationMotion

Where as xpath as:

//div[contains(@class, 'ant-notification-notice ant-notification-notice-closable ng-trigger ng-trigger-notificationMotion')]

is checking the substring ant-notification-notice ant-notification-notice-closable ng-trigger ng-trigger-notificationMotion within the @class attribute value.

I feel it would be a better idea to restrict the @class attributes as follows:

//div[contains(@class, 'ant-notification-notice') and contains(@class, 'ant-notification-notice-closable')][contains(@class, 'ng-trigger') and contains(@class, 'ng-trigger-notificationMotion')]

You can find a relevant discussion in Why does google-chrome-devtools identifies less number of elements through XPath then number of elements identified through CssSelector

Upvotes: 0

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