Xpath: how to select an option based on its text not value property?

Question

consider both types:

<select name="garden">
    <option>Flowers</option>
    <option selected="selected">Shrubs</option>
    <option>Trees</option>
    <option selected="selected">Bushes</option>
    <option>Grass</option>
    <option>Dirt</option>
</select>

Is @val for actually indicating the value="" attribute ?

Is @value for indicating the innerText value ?

for example what happens if <option> doesn't contain any value="" property. how would you select it then ?

select/option[@value = "Grass"]

Does Xpath automatically ignore white spaces for the case above? Should it be trimmed?

EDIT:

for selecting multiple options would this suffice ?

select/option[normalize-space(text())="Grass" or normalize-space(text())="Trees"]

score 35 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 10 '09 at 22:36

35

To select by text value you can use text() function. And normalize spaces is required, because they are not removed by default. Here is an example:

select/option[normalize-space(text())="Grass"]

@value - value of "value" attribute

@val - value of "val" attribute

normalize-space() - function returns the argument string with whitespace normalized by stripping leading and trailing whitespace and replacing sequences of whitespace characters by a single space

answered Oct 10 '09 at 22:36

Ivan Nevostruev

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for selecting multiple options would this suffice ? select/option[normalize-space(text())="Grass" or normalize-space(text())="Trees"] – h34y Oct 10 '09 at 22:47
It's okay, except that `text()` is not a function. It's a node test. And Marc's answer is both shorter, and more idiomatic for XPath. – Pavel Minaev Oct 27 '09 at 00:01
BTW, how `text()` should be called (if it's not a function)? – Ivan Nevostruev Oct 27 '09 at 00:32

score 12 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 10 '09 at 22:33

12

Well, if whitespace isn't an issue:

/select/option[.='Grass']

I'd need to check re whitespace, though. You could always normalize:

/select/option[normalize-space(.)='Grass']

answered Oct 10 '09 at 22:33

Marc Gravell

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for selecting multiple options would this suffice ? select/option[normalize-space(.)="Grass" or normalize-space(.)="Trees"] – h34y Oct 10 '09 at 22:47
This seems to be case-sensitive. Is there a way to make this otherwise? – Tatarin Jul 28 '15 at 17:35
1

@Timur: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2893551/case-insensitive-matching-in-xpath – Marc Gravell Jul 29 '15 at 12:47

Xpath: how to select an option based on its text not value property?

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