How to use XPath contains() for specific text?
Be careful of the contains()
function.
It is a common mistake to use it to test if an element contains a value. What it really does is test if a string contains a substring. So, td[contains(.,'8')]
takes the string value of td
(.
) and tests if it contains any '8'
substrings. This might be what you want, but often it is not.
This XPath,
//td[.='8']
will select all td
elements whose string-value equals 8
.
Alternatively, this XPath,
//td[normalize-space()='8']
will select all td
elements whose normalize-space() string-value equals 8
. (The normalize-space() XPath function strips leading and trailing whitespace and replaces sequences of whitespace characters with a single space.)
Notes:
- Both will work even if the 8 is inside of another element such as a
a
,b
,span
,div
, etc. - Both will not match
<td>gr8t</td>
,<td>123456789</td>
, etc. - Using
normalize-space()
will ignore leading or trailing whitespacesurrounding the8
.
Try the following xpath, which will select the whole text contents rather than partial matches:
//table//td[text()='8']
Edit: Your example HTML has a tags inside the td elements, so the following will work:
//table//td/a[text()="8"]
See example in php here: https://3v4l.org/56SBn