xpath expression - select element where parent contains a specific text

Question

I struggle currently to find the correct xpath expression to select an input element where its parent/sibling element contains a specific text.

In the example below, I would like to select the "input" element where, in the same tr row, a td element with a specific text exists.

my example path - returns no match

//input[contains(../../../td/text(),"15-935-331")]

source code

<tr>
    <td><a href="xxx" target="_blank">xxxx, yyyyy</a></td>
    <td>Mr</td>
    <td></td>
    <td> 15-935-331</td>
    <form id="betreuerModel" action="xxxx" method="POST">
      <td class="tRight">
        <input value="Bearbeiten" id="bearbeiten" name="bearbeiten" class="submit" title="Bearbeiten" type="submit"/>
      </td>
    </form>
</tr>
<tr>
 // .. next row with same structure
</tr>

Keith Hall · Accepted Answer · 2017-09-11 09:20:16Z

5

The contains function, when given a nodeset, will only operate on the very first node in that nodeset. In your case, it is <td><a href="xxx" target="_blank">xxxx, yyyyy</a></td>. You could instead refactor your expression so that the predicate operates on all the nodes to check, and the contains function operates on a single item:

//input[../../../td/text()[contains(., "15-935-331")]]

This will get any input element, where the parent's parent's parent contains a td element with a text node containing the text 15-935-331.

A perhaps easier way to specify this would be to use ancestor::tr[1]/td in place of ../../../td.

//input[ancestor::tr[1]/td/text()[contains(.,"15-935-331")]]

This would get the first tr in the ancestor hierarchy, and operate on that.

edited Sep 11, 2017 at 9:20

answered Nov 25, 2016 at 8:46

Keith Hall

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Markus · Accepted Answer · 2016-11-25 08:59:36Z

3

As an alternative to the solution posted by Keith, you can use the following XPath expression:

//tr[td[contains(., "15-935-331")]]/form//input

This makes it a bit more independent of the actual structure of the HTML. It selects the tr which contains a td containing the given text, and from that tr it takes the input element anywhere below the form element.

answered Nov 25, 2016 at 8:59

Markus

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