Java XPath syntax with string variable within XPath

Question

I am trying to grab a dynamic element with an incremental number in the XPath.

Here is the HTML of the element that I am trying to find:

<a class="delete_link" data-hide-id="list_169" data-delete-action="/panel/menuitem/menudelete/id/169" href="#">Delete</a>

Here is my code:

driver.findElement(By.xpath("//*[@id=list_"+pageID+"")).click();

where pageID is the string number following "list_"

I cannot seem to get the syntax right for it to find this element. I would normally just find it by ID, but this element doesn't have a normal ID identifier as you can see.

zx485 · Accepted Answer · 2018-08-06 21:05:55Z

1

You were using the wrong attribute name @id instead of @data-hide-id.
Try the following XPath expression:

"//a[@data-hide-id = 'list_" + pageID + "']"

In a whole command this could look like

driver.findElement(By.xpath("//a[@data-hide-id = 'list_" + pageID + "']")).click();

edited Aug 6, 2018 at 21:05

answered Aug 6, 2018 at 20:51

zx485

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3 Comments

NickaBrick Over a year ago

I tried this, but it seems to be missing one quotation as there are 7 in the whole string, and doesnt like that pageID is a string instead of an int I had to make pageID a string because of how I pull it to account for the dynamic element. Here is the code for that:

WebElement activeName =                 driver.findElement(By.xpath("//input[contains(@name,'link-active')]")); 		String pageName = activeName.getAttribute("name"); 		String pageID = pageName.replaceAll("[^0-9]", ""); 		System.out.println(pageID);

Sorry I dont know how to block code in comments

zx485 Over a year ago

Thanks for your comment. I changed the quotes including a single quote '. Now there are even counts of quotes in the expression.

NickaBrick Over a year ago

Thanks! That works. So the double quotes go around the inserted object within the xpath value single quotes. Got it! Much love dude

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