I want to write a function that identifies all the links on a particular HTML page. My idea was to use XPath, by using a path such as //body//a[x] and incrementing x to go through the first, second, third link on the page.
Whilst trying this out in Chrome, I load up the page http://exoplanet.eu/ and in the Chrome Developer Tools JS console, I call $x("//body//a[1]"). I expect the very first link on the page, but this returns a list of multiple anchor elements. Calling $x("//body//a[2]") returns two anchor elements. Calling $x("//body//a[3]") returns nothing.
I was hoping that incrementing the [x] each time would give me each unique link one by one on the page, but they seem to be grouped. How can I rewrite this path so that I picks each anchor tag, one by one?
Your //body//a[1] should be (//body//a)[1] if you want to select the first link on the page. The former expression selects any element that is the first child of its parent element.
But it seems a very odd thing to do anyway. Why do you need the links one by one? Just select all of them, as a node-list or node-set, using //body//a, and then iterate over the set.
If you use the path //body/descendant::a[1], //body/descendant::a[2] and so on you can select all descendant a elements of the body element. Or with your attempt you need braces e.g. (//body//a)[1], (//body//a)[2] and so on.
Note however that inside the browser with Javascript there is a document.links collection in the object model so no XPath needed to access the links.
Related
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...:)
I have 2 elements that have the same attributes but shown one at a time on the page (When one is shown, the other disappears).The only difference between the two is that the element which is displayed will have the '::before' selector. Is it possible to use an xpath or css selector to retrieve the element based on its id and whether or not it has ::before
I bet also to try with the javascript solution above.
Since ::after & ::before are a pseudo element which allows you to insert content onto a page from CSS (without it needing to be in the HTML). While the end result is not actually in the DOM, it appears on the page as if it is - you see it but can't really locate it with xpath for example (https://css-tricks.com/almanac/selectors/a/after-and-before/).
I can also suggest if possible to have different IDs or if they in different place in the DOM make more complex xpath using above/below elements and see if it is displayed.
String script = "return window.getComputedStyle(document.querySelector('.analyzer_search_inner.tooltipstered'),':after').getPropertyValue('content')";
Thread.sleep(3000);
JavascriptExecutor js = (JavascriptExecutor) driver;
String content = (String) js.executeScript(script);
System.out.println(content);
I am using DHTMLX, and I have output that goes to a div. The text gets into the div using "attachHTMLString", but after it's in that div, I don't know how to access it.
I'm used to using jQuery where you can assign an ID or class and traverse the DOM and get it. With DHTMLX, it's like jQuery's powers are useless. I just cannot get the data that is right in front of me.
I'm looking for something like:
var divText = dhtmlxElement.getText();
What's the secret to traversing the DHTMLX elements?
I just figured out, the way to do it is to give the element an ID when it's created. Later, you can just call it out by ID.
What apparently does NOT work is to refer to the element on the page by its DHTMLX name and try to "get" it, or capture its text.
But what component are you asking about?
I.e. you can really get the text of tree node by ID...
var text = tree.getItemText("itemId");
And many other components provide this feature
My application under test has been developed by external suppliers so I have no control over the HTML structure. The application is extremely Javascript and Ajax heavy, with numerous dynamically generated buttons and auto-complete lists.
In other words, the characteristics of the pages are that they are filled with:
Elements with no fixed IDs (IDs are generated on the fly and have
numbers or other text dynamically added to them)
The same happens with some classes
Most of the times the buttons have no text associated with them since they are either custom coded 'down' arrows for lookup lists
(which aren't lookup lists but hidden divs) or '+' and '-' icons to
maximise or minimise portions of the content. -
It is therefore very difficult to identify these elements, especially the buttons.
I am trying to write a generic 'I click on the button near y' type of step so that it is not necessary to hardcode each and every button (assuming I can even get something to identify them with) into each and every test.
The thinking behind this is that normally there is a label of some sort close to the button at least.
What I want to to is to find the text label, then see if there is a button inside the same scope, and if there is not, move 'back' through the parent elements, and check if there is a button inside the scope of each parent level, up to 5 parents.
There might be all sorts of problems with this approach but I am just curious to see if this will work in general. I have run into some problems.
First I tried to use Xpaths, so I got the Xpath of the parent through :
$parentelement = $element->getParent();
$parentXpath->getXpath();
This would give me an Xpath of : (//html//span[text()='Cost center'])[1] and moving up through the parent elements all the time, they would become successively:
(//html//span[text()='Cost center'])[1]/..[1]
(//html//span[text()='Cost center'])[1]/..[1]/..[1]
and so forth.
The actual button is located in: (//html//span[text()='Cost center'])[1]/..[1]/..[1]//button but it has to go through all the parent elements in order to get there, so it will start with (//html//span[text()='Cost center'])[1]//button and should end with (//html//span[text()='Cost center'])[1]/..[1]/..[1]//button where it should find the button.
Trying to use Xpath I used:
$button_element = $session->getPage()->find('xpath',$parentXpath."//button")
I soon saw that the 'find' command appends an //html to the front of your xpath string so the Xpath that it tried to use ended up being (for each parent Xpath, but using this one as an example):
(//html(//html//span[text()='Cost center'])[1]/..[1])
I then stripped out the brackets as well as the //html, leaving me with:
//span[text()='Cost center'][1]/..[1]
but when I tried:
$button_element = $session->getPage()->find('xpath',$strippedParentXpath."//button")
I got the following error:
SyntaxError: Failed to execute 'evaluate' on 'Document': The string '(//html//span[text()='Cost center'][1]/..[1]//button)[1]' is not a valid XPath expression
However, Firepath can execute this expression and does not show a syntax error for it, although it does not find the actual button (since the button is actually located one level up, where Firepath DOES find it).
So my question 1 is: What is wrong with my Xpath that I can't use it in the find? It actually looks as if //span[text()='Cost center'][1]//button does not throw the same exception, since as I said, I am looping through the parent Xpaths, and it starts with //span[text()='Cost center'][1]//button. It crashes on //span[text()='Cost center'][1]/..[1]//button.
My second option was to get the parent element each time, starting with finding the text on the page, but then to search for a button inside the scope of the parent element using the findbutton functionality.
Looping through the parent elements (up to a maximum of 5):
$parentelement = $parentelement->getParent();
$butonelement = $parentelement->findbutton('xxx');
In other words, find ANY button in the scope of the parent element. The problem I have is how to specify a generic 'button'.
One has to associate SOME text with the button (depicted by the 'xxx' above).
But this is a typical example of buttons in the application:
<button class="autocomplete_button" type="button" id="button_OM_1"> </button>
Where the class is used more than once, and the ID is auto-generated and not the same number all the time. There is no text associated with the button since the class specifies an image.
Question 2: So how can I use 'findbutton' to generically find a 'button' no specific distinguishing characteristics? Please note that I actually did try findbutton("button"), taking the chance that there might be a 'button' somewhere in a button, but this did not work either. At least, it doesn't work consistently and by that I mean that the same test randomly seems to either find or not find the same button when I run the test a couple of times.
After doing some more investigation on this issue I have found the following:
My method of trying to find the closest button to a piece of text via traversing 'up' through the scope of the divs and spans around the text (using xpath) is actually working.
What is NOT working is SAHI, which I am using as the web driver. In other words, it is not a Behat/Mink problem, it is SAHI specific issue.
I tried the same code using Selenium2 and it executes perfectly.
I still require an answer to question 2 - how can I use findbutton() without a specific parameter such as the ID, name or value but I will see if I can find an answer to that question separately and on the Behat user group since I do think that is a Behat/Mink specific issue.
I normaly use css selector and with that, I use to navigate to the class and ID's that the button is inside. it is easier than xpath I think, like you can use
$this->getSession ()->getPage ()->find ( 'css', '.parrent1 .parrent2 .autocomplete_button ' );
I think this will help you as you know which button your gonna use in each scenario
I am new to XPath. I have a html source of the webpage
http://london.craigslist.co.uk/com/1233708939.html
Now I want to extract the following data from the above page
Full Date
Email - just below the date
I also want to find the existence of the button "Reply to this post" on the page
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/w4w/1391399758.html
Can anyone help me in writing the three XPath expressions for the above three data.
You don't need to write these yourself, or even figure them out yourself. If you use the Firebug plugin, go to the page, right click on the elements you want, click 'Inspect element' and Firebug will popup the HTML in a viewer at the bottom of your browser. Right click on the desired element in the HTML viewer and click on 'Copy XPath'.
That said, the XPath expression you're looking for (for #3) is:
/html/body/div[4]/form/button
...obtained via the method described above.
I noticed that the DTD is HTML 4/01 Transitional and not XHTML for the first link, so there's no guarantee that this is a valid XML document, and it may not be loaded correctly by an XML parser. In fact, I see several tags that aren't properly closed (i.e. <hr>, etc)
I don't know the first one off hand, and the third one was just answered by Alex, but the second one is /html/body/a[0].
As of your first page it's just impossible to do because this is not the way xpath works. In order for an xpath expression to select something that "something" must be a node (ie an element)
The second page is fairly easy, but you need an "id" attribute in order to do that (or anything that can make sure your button is unique). For example if you are sure the text "Reply to this post" correctly identify the button just do it with
//button["Reply to this post"]