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How to create XPath in Selenium Webdriver ? - Easy explanation with examples

Posted by Richa Sachdeva on

XPath


XPath uses path expressions to select nodes or node-sets in an XML document

In XPath, there are seven kinds of nodes: element, attribute, text, namespace, processing-instruction, comment, and document nodes.
<bookstore>
<book>
  <title>Little House in the Big Woods</title>
  <author>Laura Ingalls Wilder</author>
Garth Williams</illustrator>
  1.  1932 
 </book>
</bookstore>

Relationship of Nodes
Parent
Each element and attribute has one parent.
In the following example; the book element is the parent of the title, author, illustrator, and Published:
Children
Element nodes may have zero, one or more children.
In the above example; the title, author, illustrator, and Published elements are all children of the book element:
Siblings
Nodes that have the same parent.
In the above example; the title, author, illustrator, and Published elements are all siblings:
Ancestors
A node's parent, parent's parent, etc.
In the following example; the ancestors of the title element are the book element and the bookstore element:
Descendants
A node's children, children's children, etc.
In the following example; descendants of the bookstore element are the book, title, author, illustrator, and Published elements:

Selecting Nodes
XPath uses path expressions to select nodes in an XML document. The node is selected by following a path or steps. The most useful path expressions are listed below:
Expression
Description
nodename
Selects all nodes with the name "nodename"
/
Selects from the root node
//
Selects nodes in the document from the current node that match the selection no matter where they are
.
Selects the current node
..
Selects the parent of the current node
@
Selects attributes

In the table below we have listed some path expressions and the result of the expressions:
Path Expression
Result
bookstore
Selects all nodes with the name "bookstore"
/bookstore
Selects the root element bookstore
Note: If the path starts with a slash ( / ) it always represents an absolute path to an element!
bookstore/book
Selects all book elements that are children of bookstore
//book
Selects all book elements no matter where they are in the document
bookstore//book
Selects all book elements that are descendant of the bookstore element, no matter where they are under the bookstore element
//@lang
Selects all attributes that are named lang





Predicates
Predicates are used to find a specific node or a node that contains a specific value.
Predicates are always embedded in square brackets.
In the table below we have listed some path expressions with predicates and the result of the expressions:
Path Expression
Result
/bookstore/book[1]
Selects the first book element that is the child of the bookstore element.
Note: In IE 5,6,7,8,9 first node is[0], but according to W3C, it is [1]. To solve this problem in IE, set the SelectionLanguage to XPath:
In JavaScript: xml.setProperty("SelectionLanguage","XPath");
/bookstore/book[last()]
Selects the last book element that is the child of the bookstore element
/bookstore/book[last()-1]
Selects the last but one book element that is the child of the bookstore element
/bookstore/book[position()<3 data-blogger-escaped-td="">
Selects the first two book elements that are children of the bookstore element
//title[@lang]
Selects all the title elements that have an attribute named lang
//title[@lang='en']
Selects all the title elements that have a "lang" attribute with a value of "en"
/bookstore/book[price>35.00]
Selects all the book elements of the bookstore element that have a price element with a value greater than 35.00
/bookstore/book[price>35.00]/title
Selects all the title elements of the book elements of the bookstore element that have a price element with a value greater than 35.00
Selecting Unknown Nodes
XPath wildcards can be used to select unknown XML elements.
Wildcard
Description
*
Matches any element node
@*
Matches any attribute node
node()
Matches any node of any kind
In the table below we have listed some path expressions and the result of the expressions:
Path Expression
Result
/bookstore/*
Selects all the child element nodes of the bookstore element
//*
Selects all elements in the document
//title[@*]
Selects all title elements which have at least one attribute of any kind
Selecting Several Paths
By using the | operator in an XPath expression you can select several paths.
In the table below we have listed some path expressions and the result of the expressions:
Path Expression
Result
//book/title | //book/price
Selects all the title AND price elements of all book elements
//title | //price
Selects all the title AND price elements in the document
/bookstore/book/title | //price
Selects all the title elements of the book element of the bookstore element AND all the price elements in the document


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