I need to locate the node within an xml file by its value using XPath.
The problem araises when the node to find contains value with whitespaces inside.
F.e.:
<Root>
<Child>value</Child>
<Child>value with spaces</Child>
</Root>
I can not construct the XPath locating the second Child node.
Simple XPath /Root/Child perfectly works for both children, but /Root[Child=value with spaces] returns an empty collection.
I have already tried masking spaces with %20, & #20;, & nbsp; and using quotes and double quotes.
Still no luck.
Does anybody have an idea?
Depending on your exact situation, there are different XPath expressions that will select the node, whose value contains some whitespace.
First, let us recall that any one of these characters is "whitespace":
-- the Tab
-- newline
-- carriage return
' ' or -- the space
If you know the exact value of the node, say it is "Hello World" with a space, then a most direct XPath expression:
/top/aChild[. = 'Hello World']
will select this node.
The difficulties with specifying a value that contains whitespace, however, come from the fact that we see all whitespace characters just as ... well, whitespace and don't know if a it is a group of spaces or a single tab.
In XPath 2.0 one may use regular expressions and they provide a simple and convenient solution. Thus we can use an XPath 2.0 expression as the one below:
/*/aChild[matches(., "Hello\sWorld")]
to select any child of the top node, whose value is the string "Hello" followed by whitespace followed by the string "World". Note the use of the matches() function and of the "\s" pattern that matches whitespace.
In XPath 1.0 a convenient test if a given string contains any whitespace characters is:
not(string-length(.)= stringlength(translate(., '
','')))
Here we use the translate() function to eliminate any of the four whitespace characters, and compare the length of the resulting string to that of the original string.
So, if in a text editor a node's value is displayed as
"Hello World",
we can safely select this node with the XPath expression:
/*/aChild[translate(., '
','') = 'HelloWorld']
In many cases we can also use the XPath function normalize-space(), which from its string argument produces another string in which the groups of leading and trailing whitespace is cut, and every whitespace within the string is replaced by a single space.
In the above case, we will simply use the following XPath expression:
/*/aChild[normalize-space() = 'Hello World']
Try either this:
/Root/Child[normalize-space(text())=value without spaces]
or
/Root/Child[contains(text(),value without spaces)]
or (since it looks like your test value may be the issue)
/Root/Child[normalize-space(text())=normalize-space(value with spaces)]
Haven't actually executed any of these so the syntax may be wonky.
Locating the Attribute by value containing whitespaces using XPath
I have a input type element with value containing white space.
eg:
<input type="button" value="Import Selected File">
I solved this by using this xpath expression.
//input[contains(#value,'Import') and contains(#value ,'Selected')and contains(#value ,'File')]
Hope this will help you guys.
"x0020" worked for me on a jackrabbit based CQ5/AEM repository in which the property names had spaces. Below would work for a property "Record ID"-
[(jcr:contains(jcr:content/#Record_x0020_ID, 'test'))]
did you try #x20 ?
i've googled this up like on the second link:
try to replace the space using "x0020"
this seems to work for the guy.
All of the above solutions didn't really work for me.
However, there's a much simpler solution.
When you create the XMLDocument, make sure you set PreserveWhiteSpace property to true;
XmlDocument xmldoc = new XmlDocument();
xmldoc.PreserveWhitespace = true;
xmldoc.Load(xmlCollection);
Related
There is a page like the following:
<html>
<head></head>
<body>
<p> 5-8 </p>
<p></br>5-8</br></p>
<p> </br>5-8 </br></p>
</body>
</html>
The goal is to abstract the text in each p, the breaks and whitespaces are not wanted.
How to achieve that?
Thanks in advance! Best Wishes!
--The first Updating
Another post suggested using normalize_space(). I tried that, well, It can remove the spaces. However, only one node is left. How can I get all 30 node text without unwanted spaces? Thanks in advance and Best wishes!
enter image description here
It's not possible to achieve what you want entirely in XPath 1.0, but in XPath 2.0 or later it is possible.
You don't say what XPath interpreter you have available but you mention Chrome's XPath Helper which relies on Chrome's built in XPath interpreter which supports XPath 1.0 (as is the norm for web browsers).
But it's possible you are just using Chrome to examine the data, and have another, more modern XPath interpreter such as e.g. Saxon. If so, an XPath 2.0 solution will work for you, though you won't be able to use it in Chrome, obviously.
I've tidied up your XML example:
<html>
<head></head>
<body>
<p> 5-8 </p>
<p><br/>5-8<br/></p>
<p> <br/>5-8 <br/></p>
</body>
</html>
NB those are non-breaking spaces there.
In XPath 2.0:
for $paragraph in //p
return normalize-space(
translate($paragraph, codepoints-to-string(160), ' ')
)
NB this uses the translate function to convert non-breaking spaces (the char with Unicode codepoint 160) to a space, and then uses normalize-space to trim leading and trailing whitespace (I'm not sure what you would want to do if there were whitespace in the middle of the para, instead of just at the start or end; this will convert any such sequence of whitespace to a single space character). You might think normalize-space would be enough, but in fact a non-breaking-space doesn't fall into normalize-space's category of "white space" so it would not be trimmed.
In XPath 1.0 is not exactly possible to do what you want. You could use an XPath expression that would return each p element to your host language, and then iterate over those p elements, executing a second XPath expression for each one, with that p as the context. Essentially this mean moving the for ... in ... return iterator from XPath into your host language. To select the paragraphs:
//p
... and then for each one:
normalize-space(
translate(., ' ', ' ')
)
NB in that expression, the first string literal is a non-breaking-space character, and the second is a space. XPath 1.0 doesn't have the codepoints-to-string function or I'd have used that, for clarity.
The . which is the first parameter to the translate function represents the context node (the current node). When you execute this XPath expression in your host language you need to pass one of the p elements as the context node. You don't say what host language you're using, but in JavaScript, for instance, you could use the document.evaluate function to execute the first XPath, receiving an iterator of p elements. Then for each element, you'd call its evaluate method to execute the second XPath, and that would ensure that the p element was the context node for the XPath (i.e. the . in the expression).
I have a following element.
driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :phantomjs
driver.xpath("/html/body/form/table/tbody/tr[14]/td/table/tbody/tr/td/table/tbody/tr[1]/td[1]/font").text
=> "unique\ntext"
But I don't want to rely on unstable table layout, so I decided to use text() function in xpath like:
driver.xpath("//font[text()='unique\ntext']")
=> nil
But as you see, I couldn't find the element by the text() function. The original text is unique<br>text.
How can I match the <br> tag by using XPath?
There is no id or name attributes that I can use.
The text() test selects any text nodes. In this example there are two such nodes, before and after the <br>. It is not the same as the text method or the string value of the parent node.
One way of selecting what you want could be like this:
driver.xpath("//font[ . ='unique\ntext']")
You might need to add extra newlines before or after the text. Note that this relies on Ruby doing the conversion of \n into an actual newline character before passing the query to the XPath processor, so you need to be careful about getting your quotes right. This compares the string-value of the node, which for an element is the concatenation of all the descendent text nodes, which is what you want.
A better solution might be to use the normalize-space() function here (as long as the unique aspect of the text doesn’t depend on the newlines).
Try:
driver.xpath("//font[normalize-space()='unique text']")
Note that all leading and trailing whitespace in the target text has been removed, and any internal whitespace is changed to a single space character.
I want to transform the following text
This is a , here is another 
into
This is a , here is another 
In other words I want to find all the image paths that are enclosed between brackets (the text is in Markdown syntax) and replace them with other paths. The string containing the new path is returned by a separate real_path function.
I would like to do this using String#gsub in its block version. Currently my code looks like this:
re = /!\[.*?\]\((.*?)\)/
rel_content = content.gsub(re) do |path|
real_path(path)
end
The problem with this regex is that it will match  instead of just foto.jpeg. I also tried other regexen like (?>\!\[.*?\]\()(.*?)(?>\)) but to no avail.
My current workaround is to split the path and reassemble it later.
Is there a Ruby regex that matches only the path inside the brackets and not all the contextual required characters?
Post-answers update: The main problem here is that Ruby's regexen have no way to specify zero-width lookbehinds. The most generic solution is to group what the part of regexp before and the one after the real matching part, i.e. /(pre)(matching-part)(post)/, and reconstruct the full string afterwards.
In this case the solution would be
re = /(!\[.*?\]\()(.*?)(\))/
rel_content = content.gsub(re) do
$1 + real_path($2) + $3
end
A quick solution (adjust as necessary):
s = 'This is a '
s.sub!(/!(\[.*?\])\((.*?)\)/, '\1(/folder1/\2)' )
p s # This is a [foto](/folder1/foto.jpeg)
You can always do it in two steps - first extract the whole image expression out and then second replace the link:
str = "This is a , here is another "
str.gsub(/\!\[[^\]]*\]\(([^)]*)\)/) do |image|
image.gsub(/(?<=\()(.*)(?=\))/) do |link|
"/a/new/path/" + link
end
end
#=> "This is a , here is another "
I changed the first regex a bit, but you can use the same one you had before in its place. image is the image expression like , and link is just the path like foto.jpeg.
[EDIT] Clarification: Ruby does have lookbehinds (and they are used in my answer):
You can create lookbehinds with (?<=regex) for positive and (?<!regex) for negative, where regex is an arbitrary regex expression subject to the following condition. Regexp expressions in lookbehinds they have to be fixed width due to limitations on the regex implementation, which means that they can't include expressions with an unknown number of repetitions or alternations with different-width choices. If you try to do that, you'll get an error. (The restriction doesn't apply to lookaheads though).
In your case, the [foto] part has a variable width (foto can be any string) so it can't go into a lookbehind due to the above. However, lookbehind is exactly what we need since it's a zero-width match, and we take advantage of that in the second regex which only needs to worry about (fixed-length) compulsory open parentheses.
Obviously you can put real_path in from here, but I just wanted a test-able example.
I think that this approach is more flexible and more readable than reconstructing the string through the match group variables
In your block, use $1 to access the first capture group ($2 for the second and so on).
From the documentation:
In the block form, the current match string is passed in as a parameter, and variables such as $1, $2, $`, $&, and $' will be set appropriately. The value returned by the block will be substituted for the match on each call.
As a side note, some people think '\1' inappropriate for situations where an unconfirmed number of characters are matched. For example, if you want to match and modify the middle content, how can you protect the characters on both sides?
It's easy. Put a bracket around something else.
For example, I hope replace a-ruby-porgramming-book-531070.png to a-ruby-porgramming-book.png. Remove context between last "-" and last ".".
I can use /.*(-.*?)\./ match -531070. Now how should I replace it? Notice
everything else does not have a definite format.
The answer is to put brackets around something else, then protect them:
"a-ruby-porgramming-book-531070.png".sub(/(.*)(-.*?)\./, '\1.')
# => "a-ruby-porgramming-book.png"
If you want add something before matched content, you can use:
"a-ruby-porgramming-book-531070.png".sub(/(.*)(-.*?)\./, '\1-2019\2.')
# => "a-ruby-porgramming-book-2019-531070.png"
I want to match a regexp from a ruby string only from a defined position. Matches before that position do not interest me. Moreover, I'd like \A to match this position.
I found this solution:
code[index..-1][/\A[a-z_][a-zA-Z0-9_]*/]
This match the regexp at position index in the string code. If the match is not exactly at position index, it return nil.
Is there a more elegant way to do this (I want to avoid to create the temporary string with the first slice)?
Thanks
You could use ^.{#{index}} inside the regular expression. Don't know if that's what you want, because I don't understand your question completely. Can you maybe add an example with the tested String? And have you heard of Rubular? Great way to test your regular expressions.
This is how you could do it if I understand your question correctly:
code.match(/^.{#{index}}your_regex_here/)
The index variable will be put inside your regular expression. When index = 4, it will check if there's 4 characters from the beginning. Then it will check your own regular expression and only return true if yours is valid as well. I hope it helps. Good luck.
EDIT
And if you want to get the matched value for your regular expression:
code.scan(/^.{#{index}}([a-z_][a-zA-Z0-9_]*)/).join
It puts the matched result (inside the brackets) in an Array and joins it into a String.
I am having a problem selecting nodes by attribute when the attributes contains more than one word. For example:
<div class="atag btag" />
This is my xpath expression:
//*[#class='atag']
The expression works with
<div class="atag" />
but not for the previous example. How can I select the <div>?
Here's an example that finds div elements whose className contains atag:
//div[contains(#class, 'atag')]
Here's an example that finds div elements whose className contains atag and btag:
//div[contains(#class, 'atag') and contains(#class ,'btag')]
However, it will also find partial matches like class="catag bobtag".
If you don't want partial matches, see bobince's answer below.
mjv's answer is a good start but will fail if atag is not the first classname listed.
The usual approach is the rather unwieldy:
//*[contains(concat(' ', #class, ' '), ' atag ')]
this works as long as classes are separated by spaces only, and not other forms of whitespace. This is almost always the case. If it might not be, you have to make it more unwieldy still:
//*[contains(concat(' ', normalize-space(#class), ' '), ' atag ')]
(Selecting by classname-like space-separated strings is such a common case it's surprising there isn't a specific XPath function for it, like CSS3's '[class~="atag"]'.)
try this: //*[contains(#class, 'atag')]
EDIT: see bobince's solution which uses contains rather than start-with, along with a trick to ensure the comparison is done at the level of a complete token (lest the 'atag' pattern be found as part of another 'tag').
"atag btag" is an odd value for the class attribute, but never the less, try:
//*[starts-with(#class,"atag")]
A 2.0 XPath that works:
//*[tokenize(#class,'\s+')='atag']
or with a variable:
//*[tokenize(#class,'\s+')=$classname]
Be aware that bobince's answer might be overly complicated if you can assume that the class name you are interested in is not a substring of another possible class name. If this is true, you can simply use substring matching via the contains function. The following will match any element whose class contains the substring 'atag':
//*[contains(#class,'atag')]
If the assumption above does not hold, a substring match will match elements you don't intend. In this case, you have to find the word boundaries. By using the space delimiters to find the class name boundaries, bobince's second answer finds the exact matches:
//*[contains(concat(' ', normalize-space(#class), ' '), ' atag ')]
This will match atag and not matag.
To add onto bobince's answer...
If whatever tool/library you using uses Xpath 2.0, you can also do this:
//*[count(index-of(tokenize(#class, '\s+' ), $classname)) = 1]
count() is apparently needed because index-of() returns a sequence of each index it has a match at in the string.
You can try the following
By.CssSelector("div.atag.btag")
I came here searching solution for Ranorex Studio 9.0.1. There is no contains() there yet. Instead we can use regex like:
div[#class~'atag']
For the links which contains common url have to console in a variable. Then attempt it sequentially.
webelements allLinks=driver.findelements(By.xpath("//a[contains(#href,'http://122.11.38.214/dl/appdl/application/apk')]"));
int linkCount=allLinks.length();
for(int i=0; <linkCount;i++)
{
driver.findelement(allLinks[i]).click();
}