Xpath: select div that contains class AND whose specific child element contains text

Question

With the help of this SO question I have an almost working xpath:

//div[contains(@class, 'measure-tab') and contains(., 'someText')]

However this gets two divs: in one it's the child td that has someText, the other it's child span.

How do I narrow it down to the one with the span?

<div class="measure-tab">
  <!-- table html omitted -->
  <td> someText</td>
</div>

<div class="measure-tab">  <-- I want to select this div (and use contains @class)
  <div>
    <span> someText</span>  <-- that contains a deeply nested span with this text
  </div>
</div>

YOu need to post input xml atleast a part of what you want to write xpath for ? — SomeDude
– SomeDude, Commented Aug 14, 2016 at 13:52
That's what I thought, but then I get "no matching nodes" in FirePath validator — Andrejs
– Andrejs, Commented Aug 14, 2016 at 13:59
@SamiKuhmonen - Close. It would be ` and contains(div/span, 'someText')]` — Daniel Haley
– Daniel Haley, Commented Aug 14, 2016 at 14:08

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 12:18:15Z

159

To find a div of a certain class that contains a span at any depth containing certain text, try:

//div[contains(@class, 'measure-tab') and contains(.//span, 'someText')]

That said, this solution looks extremely fragile. If the table happens to contain a span with the text you're looking for, the div containing the table will be matched, too. I'd suggest to find a more robust way of filtering the elements. For example by using IDs or top-level document structure.

edited May 23, 2017 at 12:18

CommunityBot

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answered Aug 14, 2016 at 14:08

nwellnhof

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4 Comments

Michael Kay Over a year ago

Screen-scraping is always by its nature pretty fragile.

oldboy Over a year ago

is there any way to select an element whose child's class contains specific text?

Andy Over a year ago

@oldboy: //button[contains(text(), "11") and contains(@class, "MuiPickersDay-day") and .//span[contains(@class, "Mui")]]

oldboy Over a year ago

@Andy thx hopefully it will help somebody out in the future

DowntownDev · Accepted Answer · 2017-09-10 16:41:27Z

27

You can use ancestor. I find that this is easier to read because the element you are actually selecting is at the end of the path.

//span[contains(text(),'someText')]/ancestor::div[contains(@class, 'measure-tab')]

edited Sep 10, 2017 at 16:41

DowntownDev

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answered Feb 6, 2017 at 22:57

Alex Payne

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1 Comment

AnorZaken Over a year ago

More info on "axes" (of which ancestor is one): w3schools.com/xml/xpath_axes.asp

SomeDude · Accepted Answer · 2016-08-14 14:20:19Z

21

You could use the xpath :

//div[@class="measure-tab" and .//span[contains(., "someText")]]

Input :

<root>
<div class="measure-tab">
  <td> someText</td>
</div>
<div class="measure-tab">
  <div>
    <div2>
       <span>someText2</span>
   </div2>
  </div>
</div>
</root>

Output :

    Element='<div class="measure-tab">
  <div>
    <div2>
      <span>someText2</span>
    </div2>
  </div>
</div>'

edited Aug 14, 2016 at 14:20

answered Aug 14, 2016 at 14:09

SomeDude

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3 Comments

Daniel Haley Over a year ago

That would select the span and not the div.

SomeDude Over a year ago

I thought OP wanted span

Andrejs Over a year ago

I tried to make it as explicit as possible with the <-- comment :)

Sami Kuhmonen · Accepted Answer · 2016-08-14 14:10:35Z

3

You can change your second condition to check only the span element:

...and contains(div/span, 'someText')]

If the span isn't always inside another div you can also use

...and contains(.//span, 'someText')]

This searches for the span anywhere inside the div.

answered Aug 14, 2016 at 14:10

Sami Kuhmonen

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1 Comment

Andrejs Over a year ago

Accepting nwellnhof's answer as he got it first, but +1 for the alternative. cheers.

I.sh. · Accepted Answer · 2023-05-24 00:48:05Z

1

You can simply do it this way:

//div[contains(text(),'someText')][@class='measure-tab']

This XPath expression will select all div elements in the DOM that contain the text 'someText' and have a class attribute with the value 'measure-tab'.

answered May 24, 2023 at 0:48

I.sh.

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