How to use “not” in xpath?

Question

I want to write something of the sort:

//a[not contains(@id, \'xx\')]

(meaning all the links that there \'id\' attribute doesn\'t contain t

Answer 1

you can use not(expression) function

or

expression != true()

Answer 2

None of these answers worked for me for python. I solved by this

a[not(@id='XX')]

Also you can use or condition in your xpath by | operator. Such as

a[not(@id='XX')]|a[not(@class='YY')]

Sometimes we want element which has no class. So you can do like

a[not(@class)]

Answer 3

not() is a function in xpath (as opposed to an operator), so

//a[not(contains(@id, 'xx'))]

Answer 4

Use boolean function like below:

//a[(contains(@id, 'xx'))=false]