Would like to use wildcard within an xpath - xpath

I have two links on a page that have the text 'London'. I want to choose the second one on the page, but I want to define the xpath in a way that it chooses by the parent div, but I want to use wildcard in case the link is moved.
So, the two xpaths are
//div[#id="first-id"]/div/div[2]/a[text()="London"]
//div[#id="second-id"]/div[2]/div[3]/div/a[text()="London"]
I want to use a wildcard and define the xpath within the parent div:
i.e. //div[#id="second-id"]/*/a[text="London"]
I already understand I can just use the full xpath and not have any wildcards, but I want to know if there's a way to do what I am proposing using xpath. I thought maybe contains() in some way would work but am not familiar enough with it.

To find the a element wherever it may appear within the div element, the descendant path is represented simply by //:
//div[#id="second-id"]//a[text="London"]

Related

Watir how to click on nested element

I'm trying to click on "Mr" from the drop down list I've tried a combination of things but non of them seem to work.
I've even tried xpath which is usually reliable but for this case its failing.
$browser.element(:xpath, "/html/body/div[1]/div[1]/div[1]/div/div[2]/div[1]/div[2]/div/div[2]/div/div[2]/div[2]/form/div[2]/div/div[2]/div/div/div/div/div/ul/li[2]/a").click
The XPath suggested by Saurabh Gaur, can be written in a more readable Watir-like fashion using:
$browser.ul(class: 'dropdown-menu').link(text: 'Mr').click
Note that this assumes that there is only one ul element with class dropdown-menu. If there are multiple, you will need to scope the search to the specific dropdown using an element that likely exists higher in the DOM.
However, given there is likely only one link with text "Mr", you can probably get away with simply:
$browser.link(text: 'Mr').click
Given the link is a dialog that switches from hidden to visible, you may need to also wait:
$browser.link(text: 'Mr').when_present.click
Your xPath is positional which depends on element position.. it will not work if elements are change their position means adding some elements after some action on the page.
After seeing your attached image I have generated following xPath as below :-
//ul[contains(#class, 'dropdown-menu')]/descendant::span[contains(.,'Mr')]/parent::a
Try with this xPath.. May be it will work...:)

What is the difference between Relative XPath and Minimal XPath?

Is there any difference between relative XPaths and minimal XPaths or both are same?
In Firebug there are two types of XPath mentioned in the options: 'XPath' and 'Minimal XPath'.
The difference between the two options is described within the documentation to the HTML panel.
The option Copy Minimal XPath is meant to make the XPath, which relates to one element, as short as possible. So the word 'minimal' actually refers to the length of the resulting XPath.
It is currently (Firebug 2.x) only available for elements, which have an ID. And for those elements it copies the XPath in the form of
//*[#id="elementID"]
where elementID represents the ID given within the id attribute of the element. So the words 'minimal' and 'relative' actually mean the same at the moment. Though future versions of Firebug may extend the feature to produce minimal XPaths for elements without ID. And those minimal paths don't necessarily have to be relative.
The option Copy XPath is available for all elements and copies an absolute XPath to an element, which e.g. looks like this:
/html/body/div/div[1]/div/div/table[4]/tbody/tr[17]/td[2]/a

XPATH - grab content from DIV with nestled a text

Can anyone help me with this? I cannot grab the 'Blue Shoes' text from this div no matter what I try! Been over an hour now and still cannot work it out. Tried:
//div[#class='breadcrumbs']/text(
//div[#class='breadcrumbs']
//div[#class='breadcrumbs']/div
Nothing seems to work. Any help MUCH appreciated.
<div class="breadcrumbs">Home/Blue Shoes</div>
</div>
//div[#class='breadcrumbs']/text()
should give you what you need in this case - it will select the set of all text nodes that lie directly under the breadcrumbs div. if you want to specifically target the one at the end (e.g. if there's more than two levels of breadcrumb and there's another text node for, say, a slash between two a elements) then the slightly more specific
//div[#class='breadcrumbs']/text()[last()]
may work better.
If this doesn't work then there are two other possibilities I can think of. Firstly, the HTML DOM uses upper case for element names, and since XPath is case-sensitive you may find you need //DIV instead of //div. Or maybe there's a namespace issue - if your document has an xmlns="..." on the root element then that puts your div elements in a namespace, and unprefixed names in xpath refer to nodes in no namespace. To select namespaced nodes you have to bind a prefix to the corresponding namespace URI and then use the prefix in your expressions (//xhtml:div). Exactly how you go about mapping prefixes depends on what library/tool/language you're using to execute the xpath queries.

sublime text automatching brackets in <h1> tags

I have Just started using Sublime Text 2 and am having problems with the matching brackets. withing <h1> tags
It will match the closing bracket almost everywhere else in my document.
not sure what i need to change to make it work anywhere in my document regardless of the context.
I need this functionality as i am using angular.js and need to add {{variable}}
I am not quite sure what you are asking. Do you need to perform some kind of search replacement or find the matching element?
However there exists a plugin called Emmet which has functions of Go to matching pair, Match pair inwards and Match pair outwards.
You can also perform complex HTML tree modifications with this plugin.
It sounds like your autocomplete might be turned off.
In your user settings, add "auto_complete_commit_on_tab": true

xpath: find a node whose content has a provided string

I have some HTML like this:
<div> Make </div>
And I want to match it based on the fact that the content of the node contains the text "Make".
Put another way "Make" is a substring of the div node's content and I want to make such a match on this node using XPath.
The obvious solution would be
//div[contains(., 'Make')]
but this will find all divs that contain the string "Make" anywhere within their content, so not only will it find the example you've given in the question but also any ancestor div of that one, or any divs where that substring is buried deep in a descendant element.
If you only want cases where that string is directly inside the div with no other intervening elements then you'd have to use the slightly more complex
//div[text()[contains(., 'Make')]]
This is subtly different from
//div[contains(text(), 'Make')]
which would look only in the first text node child of the div, so it would find <div>Make<br/>Break</div> but not <div>Break<br/>Make</div>
If you want to allow for intervening elements other than div, then try
//div[contains(., 'Make')][not(.//div[contains(., 'Make'])]
Seems like this is what you are looking for: //div[contains(text(),'Make')]
If this will not work you can try: //div[contains(.,'Make')]. This will find all divs, which contain 'Make' in any attribute.
To find that node anywhere in the document, you would need this:
//div[contains(text(), "Make")]

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