XPath find descendant where ancestor doesn't have specific class

Question

Trying to create a XPath to find input elements with a specific label on my website. However I want it to not be found if its ancestor is a specific div.

Assume we got the following HTML:

<div class="content"> <div class="abc"> <div> //some other elements </div> <div> <h2>Name</h2> <input></input> </div> </div> <div> <div> //some other elements </div> <div> <h2>Name</h2> <input></input> </div> </div> </div>

I only want to find the name input in the div that does not have the surrounding div "abc".

I have this that only finds the name input if it's in the the abc wrapper but can't make it find the other way around:

//div[contains(@class, 'content')]//div[contains(@class, 'abc')]//descendant::h2[.='Name']/following-sibling::input

I thought I could use a not() function around the contains(abc) like so:

[not(contains(@class, 'abc'))]

But it did not work.

kjhughes · Accepted Answer · 2016-07-08 12:31:52Z

3

This XPath will select all h2 elements whose string value equals "Name" and that is not a descendent of a div with of class = 'abc':

//h2[.='Name' and not(ancestor::div/@class = 'abc')]

answered Jul 8, 2016 at 12:31

kjhughes

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2 Comments

user1593846 Over a year ago

Thnaks man it worked, I just have a question regarding this part ´div/@class = 'abc'´ am I understanding this wrong or does that not mean a div with a child that has the class 'abc' instead of the div itself?

kjhughes Over a year ago

No, not(ancestor::div/@class = 'abc') returns true when there are no ancestor div elements with class attributes equal to abc. It could also be written as not(ancestor::div[@class = 'abc']).

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