Selenium - how to select an element with variable text

Question

<div class="order-number">
<h3>"Order number: "<strong>123-123123</strong> </h3>
</div>

Any idea how to select the order number? I use Selenium 2. I tried this:

driver.findElement(By.xpath(".//*[matches(text(),'\\d+-\\d+']"));

But it's not working. Does Xpath2 support regex?

The number of the order is always different, but the style of XXX-XXXXXX is always the same.

David Lavender · Accepted Answer · 2017-04-07 13:50:01Z

1

A different approach would be to search by CSS selector instead:

By.cssSelector(".order-number H3 STRONG")

It's a bit more frail if the page structure changes though.

A better solution (if you are able to change the page code) is to put an ID on the <strong> tag and use By.id. That's much quicker, less frail, and more readable than XPaths or CSS-Selectors.

answered Apr 7, 2017 at 13:50

David Lavender

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Andersson · Accepted Answer · 2017-04-07 13:57:07Z

1

Simply try

driver.findElement(By.xpath("//div[@class='order-number']//strong")).getText();

Also note that selenium supports matches() in XPath. The cause of your issue seem to be missing closing parenthesis:

now

matches(text(),'\\d+-\\d+'

should be

matches(text(),'\\d+-\\d+')

working one

//h3/strong[matches(text(),'\d+-\d+')]

edited Apr 7, 2017 at 13:57

answered Apr 7, 2017 at 13:49

Andersson

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1 Comment

David Martinka Over a year ago

Neither way is working for me, always the same result - The string '//h3/strong[matches(text(),'\d+-\d+')]' is not a valid XPath expression.

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