XPath selector language which like swiss army knife. It helps me when i am in tough situation. Using some little helper tips sometimes save your times.

1. Descendant-or-self (//)

You can use that syntax when you want select descendant nodes. For example:

We can find ‘h1’ element a few different ways.

//article/div/h1

or

//article//b

2. Parent of Element (..)

One of useful expressions is ’..’ (parent of element). It helps to find parent element of a node.

For example first column of table static and second column dynamic, you should refer the first column.

You can use this expression like this:

//table/tr[1]/td[2]

But this probably will be more useful:

//td[@id=‘sample’]/../td[2]

3. Logical Operators (not, or ,and)

Logical operators, many time make your job easy.

3.1 Not Operator

Example:

• Emirates
• Aeroflot
• (Promoted) Turkish Airlines
• KLM

Xpath selector:

//ul/li[not(@class=“company”)]

3.2 AND Operator

Example

• Emirates
• Aeroflot
• (Promoted) Turkish Airlines
• KLM

Xpath selector:

//li[(@class=‘company’) and (@id=‘promoted’)]

3.3 OR Operator

Example

• Emirates
• Aeroflot
• (Promoted) Turkish Airlines
• KLM

We need to select Istanbul flights. Below XPath gets two items.

//li[(@from=‘istanbul’) or (@to=‘istanbul’)]

4. String Functions

Sometimes attributes, id and class names may not be found on the document.  So you would be have to get the element with XPath string functions .

4.1 contains(haystack, needle)

Xpath expression at below will return that all li elements contains ‘Airline’.

Example:

• 1. Airline: Turkish Airlines
• 2. Airline: KLM Airlines
• 3. Airline: Lufthansa

XPath Expression:

//li[contains(text(),‘Airline’)]

4.2 starts-with(haystack,needle) / ends-with(haystack,needle)

It is possibly easy to predict that expressions what to do. It will return 2 result (first and second li element as we expect).

Example:

• Airline: Turkish Airlines
• Airline: KLM Airlines
• Airline: Lufthansa

XPath Expression:

//li[ends-with(text(),‘Airlines’)]

4.3 matches(haystack,expression)

‘matches’ function provide to us to use regex. But that function supported by Xpath 2.0. If you search a playground for Xpath 2.0, that XPath 2.0 tester is going to help to you.

Example:

• 2017
• 2016
• 2015
• 1800
• 1700

Expression at below gets only between 2010..2019 years

//li[matches(text(),‘201[0-9]’)]

5. Extras

Probably most of times you will not use these functions but good to know. Keep them mind just in case.

5.1 Ceiling , Floor and Round

Below example will return li element that text with ‘3’.

Example:

   
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You can see casting function like string() at below expression.

XPath Expression:

//li[text()=string(ceiling(2.6))]

5.2 Greather and Smaller

For example:

   
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Expression

//li[number(text()) > 3.8]

5.3 Position

You can get an element by index simply with two ways.

For example:

   
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XPath expression:

//li[4] //li[position()=4]

Sources:

• http://videlibri.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/xidelcgi
• https://www.w3.org/TR/xpath20/
• https://www.w3.org/TR/xpath30/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_layout_engines_(XML)#Query_technologies
• https://gist.github.com/LeCoupa/8c305ec8c713aad07b14#file-xpath-cheatsheet-js-L194
• Cover Image By :  https://unsplash.com/@iamkiran