Retrieving xpath from stored webelement variable

Question

I am using page object model. Here is XPath that I have written for Heading of the page and stored it in the heading WebElement variable:

@FindBy( xpath = "//div[@class='page-title category-title']")
private WebElement heading;`

My goal is to get or extract the XPath back from the element heading. I have tried printing it but the result I am getting is, System.out.println(heading)

gave me:

[[FirefoxDriver: firefox on WINDOWS (4520a9a1-c58b-4b34-ae3e-48613e6e7005)] -> xpath: //div[@class='page-title category-title']]`

And my expectation is :

//div[@class='page-title category-title'] 

as a string.

Answer 1

Just extract the class attribute of the element and create the xpath

String headingClass = heading.getAttribute("class");

String headingPath = "//div[@class='"+ headingClass + "']"

then use headingPath wherever you want.

Answer 2

String source = "[[FirefoxDriver: firefox on WINDOWS (4520a9a1-c58b-4b34-ae3e-48613e6e7005)] -> xpath: //div[@class='page-title category-title']]";
System.out.println((source.substring(0, source.length() - 1).split("-> ")[1]));
//Output:
xpath: //div[@class='page-title category-title']

1. (source.substring(0, source.length() - 1) : this will remove the last element which is ']'(the last square bracket)

2. split("-> ")[1] : will split the string/element and return it's 1 element.

System.out.println(source.split("-> ")[1]);

Output: xpath: //div[@class='page-title category-title']]

do you see the last ']'? that's the one I'm removing in the first step.

Answer 3

I don't know why you want the output like this , but i can think of one way of getting you the class name instead of the whole xpath,

System.out.println(heading.getAttribute("class"));

which will give you result as page-title category-title

Then you can prefix & postfix with you xpath string if only you want the output like that, then again as i said, i don't know why you need output string like that,

System.out.println("//div[@class='"+heading.getAttribute("class")+"']");

Want to know out of curiosity, whats the purpose of doing this?

Answer 4

We will be splitting the string with the delimitor "xpath:"

String[] a = heading.toString().split("xpath:");

//The length will be 2
System.out.println("length"+a.length); 

// will print //div[@class='page-title category-title']
System.out.println(a[a.length-1]); 

Answer 5

String source = "[[FirefoxDriver: firefox on WINDOWS (4520a9a1-c58b-4b34-ae3e-48613e6e7005)] -> xpath: //div[@class='page-title category-title']]";

//Split your Source from "->"
String[] temp = source.split("-> ");

//Split your Source from ": "
String[] temp2 = temp[1].split(": ");

//Access first index to get locator name
String locator = temp2[0];

//Access Second index to get locator value
String value = temp2[1].substring(0,temp2[1].length()-1);