XPath Contains Text | XPath Starts With, Ends With

XPath Axes in Selenium

How to handle Complex and Dynamic Elements in Selenium using XPath?

• How to Find XPath in Chrome Browser

1. Right-click on email box and go to inspect option. Now press ctrl+F. Write XPath by following basic syntax and on the basis of the below screenshot.

We will start to write XPath with //, followed by input tag, then we will use the select attribute, followed by its attribute name like name, id, etc, and then we will choose a value of attribute in single quotes.

XPath(email): //input[@id = ’email’] (1 of 1 matched)

Here, (1 of 1) means exact match. It indicates that there is only one element available for this XPath. 

If it is showing (1 of 2) or (1 of 3) and so on. In this case, you don’t need to choose this XPath because there are multiple elements available with the same XPath.

Key point: 
If you find more than one elements matching the same XPath, do not choose that XPath. Try to write another XPath for that element and find one matched only (i.e. 1 of 1).

XPath Contains

Let’s try to find XPath of “Sign up button” on the Facebook web page for demo. Open Facebook page, right-click on sign up button, and go to inspect option. Now write XPath in the panel like this:
         XPath(Sign Up): //button[contains(@name, ‘websubmit’)]

Key point:
1. The main feature of contains() method is that it can find element with partial text. For example, let’s find the same XPath for sign up button with partial text.
         XPath(Sign Up): //button[contains(@name, ‘web’)]

In this expression, we have taken “name” as attribute and “web” as partial text in the place of websubmit.

2. Contains() method can be used in any condition when you need to find XPath.

         XPath(New password): //input[contains(@id, ‘u_0_13’)]

Scenarios to Automate:

1. Launch the Firefox browser by creating WebDriver object.
2. Open Google Home page https://www.google.com.
3. Send the text into the search box.
4. Click on the search button.
5. Close the browser.

Let’s look at a glance at the source code to automate the following scenario.
Program source code 1:

package seleniumProject; 
import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit; 
import org.openqa.selenium.By; 
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver; 
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement; 
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver; 

public class GoogleHomePage 
{ 
 public static void main(String[] args) 
 { 
// Create a WebDriver object. 
   WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver(); 
// Maximize the Firefox browser. 
   driver.manage().window().maximize(); 

// Store the home page URL in a variable URL of type String. 
   String URL = "https://www.google.com"; 
// Call get() method using reference variable driver and pass URL as parameter to get method. 
   driver.get(URL); 

// Wait for load home page completely. 
   driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(10, TimeUnit.SECONDS); 

// Find element "search box" by using findElement() method of WebElement. 
   WebElement searchBox = driver.findElement(By.xpath("//input[contains(@name,'q')]")); 
// Send a text into search box. 
   searchBox.sendKeys("Selenium"); 

// Click on search button.
   WebElement sButton = driver.findElement(By.xpath("//input[contains(@name,'btnK')]")); 
   sButton.click(); 
// Close the browser. 
   driver.close(); 
   System.out.println("Test successful"); 
  } 
}

Output: 
      Test successful

In the following source code, we have found out XPath of elements by using the contains method.

XPath Starts-with

starts-with() is a method that finds those elements whose attribute value changes on refresh on the web page. This method checks the starting text of an attribute and finds elements whose attribute changes dynamically.

We can also use this method to find elements whose attribute value is static (not changing). The syntax for starts-with() method is given below:
Syntax: 
          XPath: //tagname[starts-with(@attribute, ‘value’)]

For example: Let’s find XPath of search button using starts-with() method on web page https://neilpatel.com/ubersuggest.

package seleniumProject; 
import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit; 
import org.openqa.selenium.By; 
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver; 
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement; 
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver; 

public class StartswithExample 
{ 
 public static void main(String[] args) 
 { 
// Create a WebDriver object. 
   WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver(); 
// Maximize the Firefox browser. 
   driver.manage().window().maximize(); 

// Store the home page URL in a variable URL of type String. 
   String URL = "https://www.neilpatel.com/ubersuggest"; 
// Call get() method using reference variable driver and pass URL as parameter to get method. 
   driver.get(URL); 

// Wait for load home page completely. 
   driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(10, TimeUnit.SECONDS); 
// Find element "search box" by using findElement() method of WebElement. 
   WebElement searchBox = driver.findElement(By.xpath("//input[starts-with(@name, 'keyword')]")); 
// Send a text into search box. 
   searchBox.sendKeys("Selenium WebDriver"); 

// Click on search button WebElement. 
   searchButton = driver.findElement(By.xpath("//button[starts-with(@type,'submit')]")); 
   searchButton.click(); 
// Close the browser. 
   driver.close(); 
   System.out.println("Test successful"); 
  } 
}

Output: 
       Test successful

Using “OR” Statement

Using “AND” Statement

Syntax: 
         XPath: //tagname[XPath statement-1 and XPath statement-2]

For example: let us find XPath of sign up button on facebook page.
     XPath(Sign Up button): //button[@type = ‘submit’ and @id = ‘u_0_19’] (1 of 1 matched).

XPath Text

How to Create XPath of Link in Selenium?