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Tuesday, September 14, 2010

How to use functions in xpath in selenium

How to use functions in xpath
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()]");
How we can select the second last checkbox and third last checkbox. We can use last()- function to indentify the last object among all similar objects.
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]");
above code will select second and forth checkbox respectively.

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.

Posted by Niraj Kumar at 7:05 AM
Labels: , ,
Reactions: 

80 comments:

  1. Hey man, thanks for the post. It helped me in writing one of my Cucumber scripts. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete

  2. How 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?

    I 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?

    ReplyDelete

  4. THANKS FOR SHARING THE VALUABLE INFORMATION

    ReplyDelete

  5. Again niraj ur post helped me ... Kudos to you.Keep it doing lyk this for us.
    Thanks a ton.... :)

    ReplyDelete

  6. Thank you so much for posting, exactly what I was looking for.

    ReplyDelete

  7. selenium.click("xpath=(//input[@type='submit'])[last()-1]");

    "I tried above X path. but it is not working.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies

    1. 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

      Delete

  8. selenium.click("//input[@type='checkbox'][last()+1]");

    I 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

    ReplyDelete

  9. Hi bhanu pratap,
    You 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.

    ReplyDelete

  10. Hi Niraj,
    Is 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

    ReplyDelete

  12. If I want to use the "Starts-with" built in function do I need to download any function from this site?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies

    1. No its javascript funtion in-build with selenium

      Delete

  13. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete

  14. Hello, great post - thanks, but I have a problem with a complicated dyn-structure, i.e.:
    < 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?

    ReplyDelete

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  37. Hi Niraj,

    Thanks for sharing this.
    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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  40. 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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  41. Hi Niraj,
    I 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

    ReplyDelete
    Replies

    1. 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

      Delete

    2. The 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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  42. Please update for the remaining functions..Its realy helps good to many people like me

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  48. Don't use index. Instead use:
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