How can I find the element in selenium with java

Question

I am not able to find the element in the selenium webdiver with java the Details are given below. I had used all class as given below in addition to Xpath:

<a href="#">
    <span>
        <i class="fa fa-users"></i>
        Employee
    </span>
    <span class="left-menu-list-right-icon">
        <i class="fa fa-chevron-right" aria-hidden="true"></i>
    </span>
</a>

Xpath is given as below

.//*[@id='sidebar-menu']/ul/li[2]/a

The element is not found

please add the html code from the page/element you're trying to find and the code you're using. — Swagin9, Mar 17 '17 at 16:15
What is the error you are getting? What is the Xpath you are using? Which element do you want to get? This HTML contains 5 elements. If the first is the element we need more HTML. — Niels van Reijmersdal, Mar 17 '17 at 16:21
Xpath is given as below .//*[@id='sidebar-menu']/ul/li[2]/a element not found issue — Chetan Ma, Mar 17 '17 at 16:27
You need more HTML to show that the xpath actually matches to the link you're trying to find. It would also help to clarify what "not able to find the element" means, and what selector you've tried to use. — ernie, Mar 17 '17 at 16:35
Possible duplicate of How to generate good locators for elements in Web pages? — dzieciou, Jul 15 '17 at 19:37

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 17 '17 at 16:38

Assuming there is no easier way and nothing unique about the elements here, the way I would do this is to first retrieve all elements containing at least one child with class selector "fa-users" (note: I am using pseudo-code - the calls may not be exactly correct):

elements = browser.findElements(By.Class, "fa-users").Parent();

Next, I would loop through the list of parent elements to find the one with inner text that contains the word "Employee", something like:

if element.InnerText().Contains("Employee") then element.Click();

The reason I would use this method is that it looks like this application uses dynamically generated DOM elements, which means that the XPath you found as a selector may not be the same as the XPath to the element when you run your test.

How can I find the element in selenium with java

1 Answers1