Automation using selenium is a great experience. It provides many way to identif an object or element on the web page.
But sometime we face the problems of idenfying the objects on a page which have same attributes. When we get more than
one element which are same in attribute and name like multiple checkboxes with same name and same id. More than one button having
same name and ids. There are no way to distingues those element. In this case we have problem to instruct selenium to identify a perticular
object on a web page.
I am giving you a simple example . In the below html source there are 6 checkboxes are there having same type and same name.
It is really tough to select third or fifth.
<html>
<body>
<input type='checkbox' name='chk'>first
<br><input type='checkbox' name='chk'>second
<br><input type='checkbox' name='chk'>third
<br><input type='checkbox' name='chk'>forth
<br><input type='checkbox' name='chk'>fifth
<br><input type='checkbox' name='chk'>sixth
</body>
</html>
Thare are some function we can use in Xpath to identify the abject in above cases.
An XPath expression can return one of four basic XPath data types:
* String
* Number
* Boolean
* Node-set
XPath Type : Functions
Node set : last(), position(), count(), id(), local-name(), namespace-uri(), name()
String : string(), concat(), starts-with(), contains(), substring-before(), substring-after(), substring(), string-length(), normalize-space(), translate()
Boolean : boolean(), not(), true(), false(), lang()
Number : number(), sum(), floor(), ceiling(), round()
I will show you how we can use some of these above functions in xpath to identify the objects.
Node Set : last()
In the above html file there are six checkboxes and all are having same attributes (same type and name)
How we can select the last checkbox based on the position. We can use last() function to indentify the last object among all similar objects.
Below code will check or uncheck the last checkbox.
selenium.click("xpath=(//input[@type='checkbox'])[last()]");
Below code will check or uncheck the second last checkbox and thrid last checkbox respectively.
selenium.click("xpath=(//input[@type='submit'])[last()-1]");
selenium.click("xpath=(//input[@type='submit'])[last()-2]");
Node Set : position()
If you want to select any object based on their position using xpath then you can use position() function in xpath.
You want to select second checkbox and forth checkbox then use below command
selenium.click("xpath=(//input[@type='checkbox'])[position()=2]");
selenium.click("xpath=(//input[@type='checkbox'])[position()=4]");
String : starts-with()
Many web sites create dynamic element on their web pages where Ids of the elements gets generated dynamically.
Each time id gets generated differently. So to handle this situation we use some JavaScript functions.
XPath: //button[starts-with(@id, 'continue-')]
Sometimes an element gets identfied by a value that could be surrounded by other text, then contains function can be used.
To demonstrate, the element can be located based on the ‘suggest’ class without having
to couple it with the ‘top’ and ‘business’ classes using the following
XPath: //input[contains(@class, 'suggest')].
For rest of the function please keep reading my blogs i will be posting very soon.
Hey man, thanks for the post. It helped me in writing one of my Cucumber scripts. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteHow would you use a number function to return all cells that have a value meeting a certain condition? For example, I want to locate all cells with a value > 5?
ReplyDeleteI tried //tr[number(td) >5]/td but it's not returning anything.
And a part of the DOM I'm traversing with this logic is:
http://screencast.com/t/xjfzRNopDq
The value of '8' is greater than '5' so I'm puzzled as to why this isn't returning. Any thoughts?
Heay ,
ReplyDeleteIts really good to share.
THANKS FOR SHARING THE VALUABLE INFORMATION
ReplyDeleteAgain niraj ur post helped me ... Kudos to you.Keep it doing lyk this for us.
ReplyDeleteThanks a ton.... :)
Thank you so much for posting, exactly what I was looking for.
ReplyDeleteselenium.click("xpath=(//input[@type='submit'])[last()-1]");
ReplyDelete"I tried above X path. but it is not working.
Are you sure there are more than one elements with attribute@Type=submit. This will work if there are more than one element having same attribute @type=submit
Deleteselenium.click("//input[@type='checkbox'][last()+1]");
ReplyDeleteI tried above X path to check the check box. But ending with below error.
ERROR: Element //input[@type='checkbox'][last()-2] not found on session 6ff4de71047e441a8f2afff098e7f1c0
Hi bhanu pratap,
ReplyDeleteYou have used selenium.click("//input[@type='checkbox'][last()+1]");
[last()+1] means element exist after last in that group which does not exist.
use
selenium.click("//input[@type='checkbox'][last()-1]");
to point out 2nd last element of that group.
Hi Niraj,
ReplyDeleteIs there a way in selenium IDE, we can automate starts_with, I mean script automatically generates "//button[starts-with(@id, 'continue-')] ", rather than button[ID='continue-234']. If selenium IDE can do this directly then user who ever is recording does not need to modify it every time. As my application web based, I need this always.
Thanks,
Suman
Thanks
ReplyDeleteIf I want to use the "Starts-with" built in function do I need to download any function from this site?
ReplyDeleteNo its javascript funtion in-build with selenium
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHello, great post - thanks, but I have a problem with a complicated dyn-structure, i.e.:
ReplyDelete< div id="c">
< div id="c:0:1">
< div id="c:0:2">
< a id="c:0:3".../>
< a id="c:0:4".../>
< /div>
< div id="c:1:1">
< div id="c:1:2">
< a id="c:1:3"/>
...
< /div>
< /div>
< /div>
searching last "a" (here c:1:3) tried:
//a[@id='c:'][last()] -found 2nd a (c:0:3)
//div[@id='c:'][last()] -found div 0:2
how can i find last "a" (c:1:3) or last div (c:1...)?
PS after preview: sorry for format, how can i write here formated codes?
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ReplyDeleteHi Niraj,
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I am facing one issue if i use the same to identify elements in Webdriver. I tried to find one element as below, but webdriver throwing error.
driver.findElement(By.xpath("xpath=(//a[@class='potMatchMenuLink']) [position()=1]")).click();
It would be appreciable if you can help me out.
Thanks in advance
Ajith
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Thousands of thanks for providing these useful information regarding the xpath functions. Initially i was looking for long time and finding no way out there, now got a good blogs.
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Hi Niraj,
ReplyDeleteI have ran a test using Selenium IDE 2.3.0 and copied the Junit4/Remote control script into the Eclispe Classic 4.2.2 and started running my code as 'Junit4'.I see the following error:
Invalid Xpath 2
The selenium command in Eclipse for Xpath is:
selenium.click("//input[@value='Search Equipment']");
I tried copying the Xpath using Firebug which was:
/html/body/section[2]/section/div/div/div/form/div[2]/div[2]/div/span/input
But I get the same error. Can you please help me with this
Actually, I tried copying the page html for 'Search Equipment' to make it look better for you and fix my issue quickly but unfortunately, it's not allowing me to do that
DeleteThe page html code : input type="submit" data-bp3value="Search Equipment" data-bp2value="Search Equipment" data-bp1value="Search Equipment" data-bp0value="Search Equipment" data-attrlist="bp0:value,bp1:value,bp2:value,bp3:value" value="Search Equipment" class="qa-auto-keyword-submit rba-button rba-btn-lvl-1 float-right rba-attr-trigger"
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