How to find an element that may be in multiple xpath locations?

Question

In a Web page having the following xpaths.

xpath1 = By.xpath(".//*[@id='gamepackage-game-information']/article/div/div[2]/span")).getText();

xpath2 = By.xpath(".//*[@id='gamepackage-game-information']/article/div/div[1]/figure/figcaption/div")).getText();

Some webpages having xpath1 & Some webpages having xpath2

How to get the text using if condition in Selenium Webdriver?

Answer 1

In xpath creation, we can use logical OR condition.

xpath1 = By.xpath(".//*[@id='gamepackage-game-information']/article/div/div[2]/span" | .//*[@id='gamepackage-game-information']/article/div/div[1]/figure/figcaption/div)).getText();

I hope it solves your problem

Answer 2

You can use try cache block.

String text = null;
try{
   text = driver.findElement(By.xpath(xpath1)).getText();
}catch(NoSuchElementException ex){
   text = driver.findElement(By.xpath(xpath2)).getText();
}

Hope that helps. P.S: This is just a pseudo code.

Answer 3

In our software testing company we encountered a similar situation and below worked for us.

if(driver.findElement(By.xpath(xpath1)).isdisplayed){
return driver.findElement(By.xpath(xpath1)).getText();
}
else
return driver.findElement(By.xpath(xpath2)).getText();

Answer 4

I would use something like

# pseudo code
String text = null;
text1 = driver.findElements(By.xpath(xpath1)).getText();
text2 = driver.findElements(By.xpath(xpath2)).getText();
if text1 <> '' or text2 <> '' then  # NOTE: I don't know java syntax!
  code...

You might have to use findElements (note plural) and check for the array size being zero (that is if findElement raises an error). findElements tends to get around that by just returning an empty array.