For example if we have an xml as follows:
<tr> <th>LION</th> <th>TIGER</th> <th>CHEETAH</th> <th>GIRAFFE</th> <th>BEAR</th> </tr> and I wanted to select the xpath element for GIRAFFE... how would (using xpath) I be able to tell which element under the GIRAFFE element is? Obviously, by looking at the xml, it is //tr/th[4] .... but is there a way I can use xpath to determine that it is the 4th element under ??
Not entirely sure what you're asking, but perhaps one of these XPaths will help...
This XPath expression,
count(/tr/th[.="GIRAFFE"]/preceding-sibling::th)+1 will evaluate to
4 indicating that the GIRAFFE th element is the 4th th sibling element.
This XPath,
/tr/th[.="GIRAFFE"] will select the GIRAFFE th by virtue of its contents.
This XPath,
/tr/th[.="CHEETAH"]/following-sibling::th[1] will select the GIRAFFE th by virtue of its position after the CHEETAH th.
If you want to select column element by header text in rows and use it in Selenium, here some examples:
Example of HTML:
<table> <thead> <tr> <th>LION</th> <th>TIGER</th> <th>CHEETAH</th> <th>GIRAFFE</th> <th>BEAR</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td>1</td> <td>2</td> <td>3</td> <td>4</td> <td>5</td> </tr> <tr> <td>1</td> <td>2</td> <td>3</td> <td>4</td> <td>5</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> XPATH for Selenium usage:
//table/tbody/tr/td[count(//table//th[.="GIRAFFE"]/preceding::th)+1] Selenium Java usage example:
String animalName = "GIRAFFE"; WebElement element = driver.findElement(By.xpath("//table/tbody/tr/td[count(//table//th[.='" + animalName + "']/preceding::th)+1]")); WebElement animalElementFromRow1 = driver.findElement(By.xpath("//table/tbody/tr[1]/td[count(//table//th[.='" + animalName + "']/preceding::th)+1]")); WebElement animalElementFromRow2 = driver.findElement(By.xpath("//table/tbody/tr[2]/td[count(//table//th[.='" + animalName + "']/preceding::th)+1]")); 
//th[.='GIRAFFE']to select the element?