Selenium: Matching xpath from strings in an array

Question

With Selenium WebDriver I'm attempting to select drop down menu elements on a webpage by strings read from an Excel file:

        Xls_Reader data = new Xls_Reader("src//com//testexcel//data//data3.xlsx");
        String values = data.getCellData("DropList", "Index_Value", 2);
        String selections[] = values.split(",");

They are in this form: Construction,Engineering,Legal,etc.

Each element I am trying to select looks like this:

<div class="ui-dropdownchecklist-item ui-state-default" style="white-space: nowrap;">
<input id="ddcl-selInd-i3" class="active" type="checkbox" tabindex="0" index="3" value="11">
<label class="ui-dropdownchecklist-text" for="ddcl-selInd-i3" style="cursor: default;">Construction</label>
</div>

<div class="ui-dropdownchecklist-item ui-state-default" style="white-space: nowrap;">
<input id="ddcl-selInd-i5" class="active" type="checkbox" tabindex="0" index="5" value="03">
<label class="ui-dropdownchecklist-text" for="ddcl-selInd-i5" style="cursor: default;">Engineering</label>
</div>

Here is the code:

package com.selftechy.parameterization;

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;

public class JobServe {

    static WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();

    public static void main(String[] args) throws InterruptedException {


        driver.get("https://www.jobserve.com/gb/en/Candidate/Home.aspx");
        driver.findElement(By.xpath(".//*[@id='ddcl-selInd']/span")).click();

        readExcelWords();


    public static void readExcelWords() {
        Xls_Reader data = new Xls_Reader("src//com//testexcel//data//data3.xlsx");
        String values = data.getCellData("DropList", "Index_Value", 2);
        String selections[] = values.split(",");

//help  
List<WebElement> iList = driver.findElements(By.xpath("//*[@id='ddcl-selInd-ddw']"));
    for (int i=0; i<selections.length; i++) {
    driver.findElement(By.xpath("//*[text()='" + selections[i] + "']")).click();

I know the xpath is wrong and possibly the way I am working with data types. I need a way of making xpath selection work on the basis of the array values. I am relatively new to Java and Selenium and would appreciate some help.

raven · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-12 01:33:06Z

2

Try

findElement(By.xpath("//label[.='xyz']/../input"));

where xyz is one of Construction, Engineering, etc

answered Aug 12, 2012 at 1:33

raven

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Comments

some_other_guy · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-12 07:47:24Z

0

I will suggest try using names and use

findElement(By.name("xyz"));

after using name attribute in your input code.

Something like -

<div class="ui-dropdownchecklist-item ui-state-default" style="white-space: nowrap;">
<input name ="Construction" id="ddcl-selInd-i3" class="active" type="checkbox" tabindex="0" index="3"value="11">
<label class="ui-dropdownchecklist-text" for="ddcl-selInd-i3" style="cursor: default;">Construction</label>
</div>

I am able to find an element with this method using some pseudo code like the one given above.

edited Aug 12, 2012 at 7:47

answered Aug 11, 2012 at 20:01

some_other_guy

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5 Comments

3lysium Over a year ago

It didn't work but thanks. I tried: driver.findElement(By.name("Engineering")).click(); which gave org.openqa.selenium.NoSuchElementException: Unable to locate element: {"method":"name","selector":"Engineering"} Any ideas?

some_other_guy Over a year ago

Hi! I edited the code adding the name attribute to the input tag. This is working for me with similar codes. Let us know if it works for you. :)

3lysium Over a year ago

This works, thanks a lot! I'd like to learn more about how to formulate xpaths like this. Firebug helps but it couldn't give this format- '/../input' for example. Any suggestions would be welcome...

some_other_guy Over a year ago

Great to know it works. Well even I am not good at formatting xpath. I use Xpath-Finder an add-on for Firebug (find it here) to find my xpaths. These xpaths sometime needs a bit editing to match with the xpath formats generated when I export my IDE test cases in JUnit4. I would suggest you to ask a separate question for others to answer effectively and accept any answer here for other users who are seeking a solution. :)

some_other_guy Over a year ago

If it works you may like to accept the answers for other to know it works!

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