How to use apostrophe (') in xpath while finding element using webdriver?

Question

I need to use apostrophe (') in my xpath expression which i need to use in finding elements using webdriver

i need to use below Xpath expression

//input[@text="WE'd like to hear from you"]

while using the above expression in find elements function i am replacing double quotes with single quotes

driver.findelements(By.xpath("//input[@text='WE'd like to hear from you']"))

score 29 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 26 '18 at 13:20

29

Use the xpath as shown below:

driver.findElements(By.xpath("//input[contains(@text,\"WE'd\")]"));

Hope this helps.

edited Jun 26 '18 at 13:20

David Spence

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answered May 31 '16 at 10:20

k.s. Karthik

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In my case, the text I get is dynamic either with single quotes or without. How would we handle dynamically – Ashok kumar Ganesan Nov 02 '21 at 08:14

score 7 · Answer 2 · answered May 31 '16 at 10:20

You have to use double-quotes as your XPath string literal delimiter, since XPath 1.0 doesn't provide a way of escaping quotes. In addition to that, you can escape the double-quotes in Java, to avoid it from conflicting with your Java string delimiter, which also use double-quotes :

driver.findelements(By.xpath("//input[@text=\"WE'd like to hear from you\"]"))

score 2 · Answer 3 · edited Oct 15 '18 at 09:04

2

The Escape character usage does not serve the purpose. I tried the concatenation function and it worked like a charm. Please see the below xpath.

tag: li Manager of Workflow Initiator's Manager /li

Concatenate function and split the string as –

concat('Manager of Workflow Initiator',"'",'s Manager')

Single quote is kept in double quote while other characters are kept in single quotes..

So XPath looks as –

//li[.=concat('Manager of Workflow Initiator',"'",'s Manager')]

edited Oct 15 '18 at 09:04

Nakilon

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answered Oct 05 '17 at 09:11

Moin

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if the above solution doesn't work then use the below solution using escape sequence. xpath: //li[.=\"Manager of Workflow Initiator's Manager\"] Here we are treating the whole text as a string. – Moin Oct 05 '17 at 12:02

score 1 · Answer 4 · edited Oct 15 '18 at 09:04

1

if the above solution doesn't work then use the below solution using escape sequence.

xpath: //li[.=\"Manager of Workflow Initiator's Manager\"]

Here we are treating the whole text as a string using the escape character

edited Oct 15 '18 at 09:04

Nakilon

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answered Oct 05 '17 at 12:03

Moin

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3ven · Answer 5 · 2020-03-18T16:45:36.417

0

I Encountered a similar situation where I need to write an xpath for an element shown below:

Element:

<img src="webwb/pzspacer.gif!!.gif" class="inactvIcon" data-ctl="["DatePicker"]" style="cursor:pointer;">

I was able to grep the element using below Xpath, where I used the backslash to escape the characters [ and ".

Xpath : //img[@data-ctl='\[\"DatePicker\"\]']

Hope this helps.

edited Mar 18 '20 at 16:45

answered Mar 18 '20 at 16:37

3ven

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score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Jun 04 '21 at 15:49

None of the above approaches cover a situation where both Quote and Apostrophe cos exist. I've created a function for that,

driver.findElements(By.xpath(String.format("//input[contains(@text,%s))]"),escapeQuotes(textVal));

Implemenatation of the escape Quote.

private String escapeQuotes(String text) {

    // If we don't have any Quote then enquote string in Quote
    if (!text.contains("\"")) {
        return String.format("\"%s\"", text);
    }

    // If we have some Quote but no Apostrophe then enquote in Apostrophe
    if (!text.contains("'")) {
        return String.format("'%s'", text);
    }

    // If input is like Administr"ati'on then we have both " and ' in the string so must use Concat
    // we will be building the xPath like below and let the browser xPath evaluation to handle the concatenation
    // output : concat('Administr\"',\"ati'on\")
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder("concat(");

    // Looking for " as they are LESS likely than '
    int lastPos = 0;
    int nextPos = text.indexOf("\"");
    while (nextPos != -1) {
        // If this is not the first time through the loop then seperate arguments with ,
        if (lastPos != 0) {
            sb.append(",");
        }

        sb.append(String.format("\"%s\",'\"'", text.substring(lastPos, nextPos - lastPos)));
        lastPos = ++nextPos;

        // Find next occurrence
        nextPos = text.indexOf("\"", lastPos);
    }

    sb.append(String.format(",\"%s\")", text.substring(lastPos)));
    return sb.toString();
}

How to use apostrophe (') in xpath while finding element using webdriver?

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