Why doesn't my XPath expression return any results?

Question

I have the following html:

<html>
  <body>
    <table>
      <tr>
      <tr>
      <tr>
      <tr>
      <tr>
        <td>Color Digest </td>
        <td>AgArAQICGQMVBBwTIRQHIwg0GUMURAZTBWQJcwV0AoEDAQ </td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td>Color Digest </td>
        <td>2,43,2,25,21,28,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,33,7,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,8,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,25,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,20,6,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,5,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,9,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,5,2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, </td>
      </tr>
    </table>
  </body>
</html>

and the following xpath:

tr[td='Color Digest']/td

and I'm getting zero results. Can someone explain why?

Nandan A · Accepted Answer · 2021-12-01T13:51:44.177

3

Inside xPath expression we can use attribute name and tag name(when it has text) as well. Here both <tr> and <td> are tag names. The valid xPath expressions be like,

//tagname[@attributeName='value']

and

//tagname[@tagname='text']

Inside td there is only text available so you need to write xPath like

//td[text()='Color Digest ']

or

//tr[td='Color Digest ']

If you need to use specific element then please use the match number like below,

(//td[text()='Color Digest '])[1]

or

(//tr[td='Color Digest '])[1]

Why it showed 0 matches for your xPath?

You haven't given space at end of Digest.

Yours:

//tr[td='Color Digest']/td

Corrected one:

//tr[td='Color Digest ']/td

edited Dec 01 '21 at 13:51

answered Nov 30 '21 at 15:29

Nandan A

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But what with the ‘tr’ that I want to be a parent? – Eitanos30 Nov 30 '21 at 15:43
`tr` is parent tag even with parent tag you can construct `xPath` `//tr//td[text()='Color Digest ']` – Nandan A Nov 30 '21 at 16:03
Thanks a lot. But i am looking on another post in the forum and see that it should work: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11657223/xpath-get-following-sibling. Can you explain why it is working there? – Eitanos30 Nov 30 '21 at 17:06
Apologies.. I updated my solution. – Nandan A Dec 01 '21 at 07:46

score -1 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 30 '21 at 20:07

There are a few issues with your XPath

tr[td='Color Digest']/td
^ 1
   ^ 2
                     ^ 3

XPaths should start with a / (child) or // (descendant). Child basically means one level down where descendant means one or more levels down.

tr should be //tr in this case since there are no root TRs.
You've used td when it looks like you meant to use . or text() which indicates two variations of text within the element. . means squash the contained text of all descendant nodes and text() means the contained text of just the current node.

Either text() or . will work in this case but I would generally use text() just to be safe.

[td='Color Digest'] should be [text()='Color Digest']
If you look at the HTML you provided, the text in the first TD actually contains a space at the end, e.g. 'Color Digest ' vs 'Color Digest'. That space is required unless you use a function like contains().

[td='Color Digest'] should be [text()='Color Digest ']
For this last one, I'm not sure what you are actually looking for, /td.

For the TD that contains the "Color Digest " text, it has no child. If you meant sibling TD, that would require /following-sibling.

/td should be /following-sibling::td[1].

Putting all of this together,

//tr[text()='Color Digest ']/following-sibling::td[1]

and it would return the following elements

<td>AgArAQICGQMVBBwTIRQHIwg0GUMURAZTBWQJcwV0AoEDAQ </td>
<td>2,43,2,25,21,28,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,...</td>

Why doesn't my XPath expression return any results?

2 Answers2