How to find element with dynamic names in selenium webdriver

Question

My code:

<input type="text"
       placeholder="Label"
       class="other[] form-control"
       name="projectsurvey[1438590696705][choosekey][1438590696705][]" 
       value="">

Where name projectsurvey[changes][choosekey][changes]

I'm using this to try to find the item: xpath("//*[starts-with(@name,'projectsurvey','choosekey')])

The firebug xpath is showing like this :

*[@id="choice1438590696705"]/div/div[1]/div[2]/div/input

and the firebug xpath changes:

[@id="choice143......."]/div/div[1]/div[2]/div/input

How do I find this element by xpath

Is there any other way to find this element

Answer 1

You can use 'contains' :

//input[contains(@name, 'projectsurvey[143') and contains(@name, 'choosekey][143')]

Answer 2

I had more complicated situation, even 'contains' was not enough. I got list of all elements of type (find by TAG_NAME), then looped over the list to find elements of interest by parts of id and class name. I had even to find matching pairs of elements with parts of name generated dynamically.

Because of flexible list processing in Python, it was not too hard. I try to avoid XPATH: real programming language like Python, which I already know, gives me more flexibility and is easier to maintain, than cryptic and obscure XPATH expressions. YMMV.

Answer 3

Depending on how many more similar elements you have on the page, an xpath like the following may do what you need:

//input[@type='text'][contains(@class,'form-control')][contains(@name,'projectsurvey')]