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Using JUnit I'm attempting to automate the eBay login. I cannot select the email/username field because field changes id on refresh. Any ideas?

input size="40" maxlength="64" name="962970435" id="962970435" type="text" autocapitalize="off" autocorrect="off" placeholder="Email or username" class="fld"
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The following XPath should work:

//input[@placeholder='Email or username'][@type='text']
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  • I just verified. This xpath worked. – Aalok Jun 27 '17 at 11:35
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    just added [@type='text'] because were 2 results and worked like a charm. Great thanks. (//input[@type='text'][@placeholder='Email or username']) – mdriver Jun 27 '17 at 12:05
  • @mdriver You're version is better. I've updated my answer since this version is more explicit and doesn't need indexing. – NotInventedHere Jun 27 '17 at 12:31
  • Xpath is flaky, might break after trivial design change. CSS based locator suggested by @Michael Durrant is much more reliable. – Peter M. - stands for Monica Jun 27 '17 at 14:04
  • @Peter What makes this XPath any more "flaky" than the equivalent CSS locator? – NotInventedHere Jun 27 '17 at 15:00
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If 'ID' of your webElement changes everytime after refreshing the page in this situation:

First of all look for any other attribute which Is not changing every time In that div node like name, class etc.

Option 1: If this div node has class, name attribute then you can write XPath as below.

//input[@class='fld']
OR
//input[@type='text'][@class='fld']
OR
//input[@name='962970435']

Option 2: You can use the starts-with function. 

 //input[starts-with(@placeholder,'Email or username')]

Option 3: You can use contains function. Same way you can use contains function as given below.

 //input[contains(@class,'fld')]
 //input[contains(@type,'text')]
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  • Let me know if it works for you... – Bharat Mane Jun 27 '17 at 10:55
  • Thought on options 2 and 3, too, but are not applicable for my example because id number changes randomly. (//input[@type='text'][@placeholder='Email or username']) found out that works. Thanks for your help. – mdriver Jun 27 '17 at 12:01
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I prefer css selectors:

input[placeholder='Email or username'][type=text]

Also, I'd prefer to scope to the login form, e.g.

form#SignInForm input[placeholder~='[E|e]mail'][type=text]

You may need to scope further with

form#SignInForm div#pri_signin input[placeholder~='[E|e]mail'][type=text]
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You can use either CSS Selector or Xpath. As CSS selector is already discussed above, let me point out how i achieved this using Xpath.

To identify , we will have to use a combination of 2 elements separated by AND operator as below.

Xpath : //input[@placeholder='Email or username' AND @type='text']

Hope this helps! Asky

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