How to write xpath in selenium for a text that contains Apostrophe (')

Question

I have the following text and i need to write x path

Please upload this owner's ID:

Here when i write x path with text or contains text it doesn't return the matches.

//*[@text()='Please upload this owner's ID:']

I doubt that there is an ' symbol in the word owner's and hence its not giving proper result.

Hope i can find a solution here

Possible duplicate of [How to use apostrophe (') in xpath while finding element using webdriver?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37542773/how-to-use-apostrophe-in-xpath-while-finding-element-using-webdriver) — Andersson, May 29 '18 at 09:01
@Andersson, I tried that but that logic didn't worked for me — Arun Chettur, May 29 '18 at 09:13
Can you elaborate a little about *"...didn't worked for me"*? — Andersson, May 29 '18 at 09:18
You'll need to clarify whether you mean `@text` the attribute, or the `text()` value . You can't have `@text()` — StuartLC, May 29 '18 at 10:05

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered May 29 '18 at 08:56

2

try with double quotes.

 //*[@text()="Please upload this owner's ID:"]

or with escape

 //*[@text()='Please upload this owner\'s ID:']

answered May 29 '18 at 08:56

Murthi

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StuartLC · Accepted Answer · 2018-05-29T09:30:46.623

1

Although the escape sequence for a single quote (') in Xml is ', there's a limitation in XPath 1.0 preventing ' from being used directly in a path.

Also, as it stands, your question asks for any element with a text attribute containing the search string, e.g.

 <node text="Please upload this owner's ID:" />

Assuming there are no other text attributes with strings containing those two phases, a hacky approximation to the search would be:

//*[contains(@text, 'Please upload this owner') and contains(@text, 's ID:')]

If however you meant that the element's text() content needed to match (i.e. not a text attribute):

 <node>Please upload this owner's ID</node>

Then the same hack would be:

//*[contains(text(), 'Please upload this owner') and contains(text(), 's ID:')]

edited May 29 '18 at 09:30

answered May 29 '18 at 08:55

StuartLC

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I think you might have stumbled [upon this limitation in XPath 1.0](https://stackoverflow.com/q/13482352/314291) – StuartLC May 29 '18 at 09:20
thank you stuart it worked. your 3rd condition worked. – Arun Chettur May 29 '18 at 16:22
Just one doubt . In general can we not use @text? in some cases when i give @text()='ABC' it gives results.' – Arun Chettur May 29 '18 at 16:23
`@xxx` means find the [value of attribute](https://stackoverflow.com/a/103417/314291) `xxx`, whereas `text()` means get the text value(s) under the current node. Have a look at my xml / html sample data (``) to see the difference. `@text()` shouldn't be valid IMO. – StuartLC May 29 '18 at 16:35

How to write xpath in selenium for a text that contains Apostrophe (')

2 Answers2