How does dot(.) in xpath to take multiple form in identifying an element and matching a text

Answer 1

As selenium is tagged so this answer would be based on xpath-1.0 and the associated XML Path Language (XPath) Version 1.0 specifications.

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contains(string, string)

The function boolean contains(string, string) returns true if the first argument string contains the second argument string, and otherwise returns false. As an example:

//h3[contains(.,'Associated Elements')]

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Text Nodes

Character data is grouped into text nodes. As much character data as possible is grouped into each text node. The string-value of a text node is the character data. A text node always has at least one character of data. In the below example, text() selects all text node children of the context node:

//h3[text()='Associated Elements']

In your usecase, within the HTML the text Associated Elements &nbsp(5) have   which is alternatively referred to as a fixed space or hard space, NBSP (non-breaking space) used in programming to create a space in a line that cannot be broken by word wrap. Within HTML,   allows you to create multiple spaces that are visible on a web page and not only in the source code.

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Analyzing your code trials

Your first code trial with:

//h3[contains(.,'Associated Elements')]

locates the element as it successfully identifies with partial text Associated Elements

Your second code trial with:

//h3[contains(text(),'Associated Elements')]

fails as the element contains some more characters e.g.   in addition to the text Associated Elements.

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Reference

You can find a couple of relevant discussions in:

• How to locate the button element using Selenium through Python
• What does contains(., 'some text') refers to within xpath used in Selenium
• While fetching all links,Ignore logout link from the loop and continue navigation in selenium java

Answer 2

The text() in contains(text(),'Associated Elements') is a selector that matches all of the text nodes that are children of the context node - it returns a node-set. That node-set is converted to string and passed to the contains() function.

text() isn't a function but a node test. It is used to select all text-node children of the context node. So, if the context node is an element named x, then text() selects all text-node children of x.

When you use contains(., 'Associated Elements') only an individual text node is passed to the function and it is able to uniquely match the text.

Note: copied and edited from this and this post.