Finding elements in a HTML list based on another element in the list using Selenium RC - selenium-rc

Question

<ul id="Group_00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000001" class="xxxxxxxxx">
<li class="buttons">
<button class="button edit">Edit</button>
<button class="button addToOption">Add to option</button>
<button class="button removeFromOption" >Remove from option</button>
<button class="button addToGroup">Add to group</button>
<button class="button removeFromGroup">Remove from group</button>
</li>
<li class="content">
<div class="text">
<span id="Title_Of_The_Item" class="title"> QSE244</span>
<p class="description">A description about this item</p>
</div>
</li>
</ul>
<ul id="Group_00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000002" class="xxxxxxxxx">
<li class="buttons">
<button class="button edit">Edit</button>
<button class="button addToOption">Add to option</button>
<button class="button removeFromOption" >Remove from option</button>
<button class="button addToGroup">Add to group</button>
<button class="button removeFromGroup">Remove from group</button>
</li>
<li class="content">
<div class="text">
<span id="Title_Of_The_Item" class="title"> QSE236 </span>
<p class="description">A description about this item</p>
</div>
</li>
</ul>
In the structure above I want to be able to click on the any button listed based on the titles like the QSE244 or QSE236 - ie clicking the corrosponding buttons. There is no point in using the id's Group_00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000002 as they ll be replaced with dynamic GUIDs.

Answer 1

Since the only thing that differentiates these two blocks, and, presumably, many more like them, is the text of the <span class="title"> element, that's what you need to key off of. I'd try a locator something like this:
xpath=//ul[li[#class='content']/div/span[#class='title' and .='the_title_value']]/li[#class='buttons']/button[contains(#class, 'the_button_type']
which means "the button with class 'the_button_type' that is contained within the list with class 'buttons' which is contained within the unordered list that contains a list with class 'content' that contains a div that contains a span with class 'title' and the text 'the_title_value'. So you use the title value to locate the correct ul element, and then you navigate to the button from there.