Learn About Less Talked & Used XPath Function

The concat function concatenates two or more strings and returns the resulting string.

Syntax :- concat(string₁ ,string₂ [,string_n]* )

Table of Contents

Real Time Usage

This can be used to construct custom XPath. For an example :- When we register a user , a hyperlink is shown which concatenates User’s First Name and LastName followed by City user stays. Something as below:-

<a>Amod Mahajan Bengaluru</a>

1	<a>Amod Mahajan Bengaluru</a>

We can use concat() function to write custom XPath as below:-

String FirstName = "";
String LastName = "";
String City = "";
String xpath = "//a[text()=concat('"+FirstName+" ','"+LastName+" ','"+City+" ')]";

String FirstName = "";

String LastName = "";

String City = "";

String xpath = "//a[text()=concat('"+FirstName+" ','"+LastName+" ','"+City+" ')]";

But you don’t need to use concat() function as you can achieve the same using + sign as below :-

String FirstName = "";
String LastName = "";
String City = "";
String xpath = "//a[text()='"+FirstName+" "+LastName+" "+City+"']";

String FirstName = "";

String LastName = "";

String City = "";

String xpath = "//a[text()='"+FirstName+" "+LastName+" "+City+"']";

Have you encountered an attribute value or inner text containing double quotes and single quotes both? Something as below:-

<p>Hello "Amod". How is Rahul's pet?</p>

1	<p>Hello "Amod". How is Rahul's pet?</p>

Normal way of writing XPath will not work because of enclosing quotes and you can not escape it. If we keep the text within single quotes or double quotes, we get another within text which can not be escaped.

//p[text()='Hello "Amod". How is Rahul's pet?']
//p[text()="Hello "Amod". How is Rahul's pet?"]

1 2	//p[text()='Hello "Amod". How is Rahul's pet?'] //p[text()="Hello "Amod". How is Rahul's pet?"]

If you directly use in code, it will give you invalid selector.

String text2= driver.findElement(By.xpath("//p[text()=\"Hello \"Amod\". How is Rahul's pet?\"]")).getText();
System.out.println(text2);

1 2	String text2= driver.findElement(By.xpath("//p[text()=\"Hello \"Amod\". How is Rahul's pet?\"]")).getText(); System.out.println(text2);

Exception in thread "main" org.openqa.selenium.InvalidSelectorException: invalid selector: 
Unable to locate an element with the xpath expression //p[text()="Hello "Amod". How is Rahul's pet?"] because of the following error:
SyntaxError: Failed to execute 'evaluate' on 'Document': The string '//p[text()="Hello "Amod". How is Rahul's pet?"]' is not a valid XPath expression.

Exception in thread "main" org.openqa.selenium.InvalidSelectorException: invalid selector:

Unable to locate an element with the xpath expression //p[text()="Hello "Amod". How is Rahul's pet?"] because of the following error:

SyntaxError: Failed to execute 'evaluate' on 'Document': The string '//p[text()="Hello "Amod". How is Rahul's pet?"]' is not a valid XPath expression.

In above scenario, contains method will work.

//p[text()=concat(‘Hello “Amod”. How is Rahul’,”‘s pet?”)]

I enclosed part of text containing double quotes in single quotes and part of text containing single quotes within double quotes and concatenate.

Program

package ScenarioBased;

import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;

import io.github.bonigarcia.wdm.WebDriverManager;

public class ContainsXPathMethod {
	
	public static void main(String[] args) {
		
		// Browser initialization
		WebDriverManager.chromedriver().setup();
		WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();
		String fileURL = System.getProperty("user.dir");
		driver.get(fileURL + "/src/test/resources/htmlFiles/WithDoubleSIngleText.html");
		
		
		String text1= driver.findElement(By.xpath("//p[text()=concat('Hello \"Amod\". How is Rahul',\"'s pet?\")]")).getText();
		System.out.println(text1);
		
//		String text2= driver.findElement(By.xpath("//p[text()=\"Hello \"Amod\". How is Rahul's pet?\"]")).getText();
//		System.out.println(text2);
		
		
	}

}

package ScenarioBased;

import org.openqa.selenium.By;

import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;

import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;

import io.github.bonigarcia.wdm.WebDriverManager;

public class ContainsXPathMethod {

public static void main(String[] args) {

// Browser initialization

WebDriverManager.chromedriver().setup();

WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();

String fileURL = System.getProperty("user.dir");

driver.get(fileURL + "/src/test/resources/htmlFiles/WithDoubleSIngleText.html");

String text1= driver.findElement(By.xpath("//p[text()=concat('Hello \"Amod\". How is Rahul',\"'s pet?\")]")).getText();

System.out.println(text1);

// String text2= driver.findElement(By.xpath("//p[text()=\"Hello \"Amod\". How is Rahul's pet?\"]")).getText();

// System.out.println(text2);

}

Output

You can clone code from my git repo.

If you have any doubt, feel free to comment below.
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Author: Amod Mahajan

A software Tester who is paid to judge products developed by others. Writing technical posts and creating YouTube videos are my hobbies.

3 thoughts on “Learn About Less Talked & Used XPath Function – concat()”

Anchit says:

July 11, 2021 at 5:29 pm

Hello Amod. Great info. Can you please explain logic behind this. Why you enclosed text containing single quotes within double qoutes and vice versa

Manoj says:

May 21, 2020 at 5:21 pm

Hi amod
Do you have any utility method to save multiple screenshots in word document

Gaurav Khurana says:

May 20, 2020 at 2:57 pm

You are a genius, where you get all these examples.. Thanks for sharig