same xpath on the page with dynamic ID selenium java

Question

I have a problem with the two same XPath with dynamic ID on the same page. I have tested for selenium in java, when I need to confirm button on delete upload file. Instead of this, test first submits the first button in order on delete whole record.

Both buttons are connected with a modal window so I need to locate the second button instead of the first button on the page. XPath looks like this:

//*[@id="button-with-dialog-modal-confirm-action-button-0XP"]/span

Answer 1

XPath is worst (least preferred) way to locate elements. See What makes a good Selenium locator

When I do not have a good unique name/CSS locator, I often get a list, and loop over it (using programming language, not XPath expression) to select the desired element by some other attributes. XPath is flaky, can change after very minor design change.

This allows me to:

• use more stable locators,
• avoid spending time to debug complicated XPath expressions (I prefer to debug loops in real programming language, which I already mastered, so it is much quicker to write),
• select elements in a way hard to express in XPath.

Answer 2

Just simplifying MivaScott answer, Use button Label.

By.xpath("//button[contains(text(),'Confirm')]")

Answer 3

XPath gets a bad rap as it can be very fragile/brittle; any little change in the UI and it all goes to pot.

However, with the lack of good class names and IDs, XPath can be the only option. As another answer suggests, you can try making a list of all the similar elements and iterate through them until you find the right element. But that seems overkill if you're just talking about two buttons.

I'd go with the text()[contains()] route to identify each.

driver.findElement(By.xpath("//*[@id='dynamic-1']/span/button[text()[contains(.,'Save')]]"));

Do something like this for each (obviously with accurate xpathing).

Answer 4

Problem might be that you are using only ID to check the element. This is in most cases the best and ultimate way of finding element. Nonetheless, in your case you are not using the whole ID, so there might be more elements meeting that condition.

In this case you can do one of these:

• Rely on the text (or some other attribute – for example find bigger element using size) as MivaScott and Vishal Aggarwal suggested.
• Check parent WebElement from the selected one (using ".." in xpath). This may differ in element you are trying to reach and element that is causing you this trouble.
• Do not use ID, but rather use identifier of parent element and then select the element you want to use from this element.

I don't understand the "hateful" comments about XPATH. XPATH used in OP's example is not some crazy XPATH (where "hateful" comments would apply), it is just xpath containing ID (In my opinion, using xpath for "contains" or "startswith" when dealing with IDs is in many cases a good thing).