Xpath Expression to match text correctly, but trim leading and trailing whitespace

Question

I need an xpath expression for my selenium tests to get this element:

<td class="label">        Order Date      </td>

but not this one:

<td class="label">    Order Dates  </td>

I tried these two:

"//*[text() = 'Order Date']"
"//*[text()[contains(.,'Order Date')]]"

But the exact match expression doesn't take the whitespace into account, and the contains expression also targets the element with an s.

Did you need the xpath along with leading and trailing white spaces as it is in the HTML dom? — santhosh kumar, Sep 01 '17 at 15:21
No, something that trims the whitespace. I don't care about the leading and trailing whitespace. — kroe761, Sep 01 '17 at 15:21
`"//*[contains(text(), 'Order Date')]"` targeted the element containing `Order Dates`, which isn't what I wanted. — kroe761, Sep 01 '17 at 15:25
Just replace the string with your requirement. Hope this helps you — santhosh kumar, Sep 01 '17 at 15:28
Possible duplicate of [Using XPATH to search text containing whitespace](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24362178/using-xpath-to-search-text-containing-whitespace) — JeffC, Sep 01 '17 at 18:48

score 56 · Accepted Answer · edited Oct 31 '18 at 20:28

56

You need to use the XPath's normalize-space() as in //td[normalize-space()="Order Date"]

edited Oct 31 '18 at 20:28

brandizzi

answered Sep 01 '17 at 15:27

Tarun Lalwani

Excellent! Thanks a lot! – kroe761 Sep 01 '17 at 15:35
11

To be clear, it is also worth pointing out this fragment from documentation "The normalize-space function strips leading and trailing white-space from a string, **replaces sequences of whitespace characters by a single space**, and returns the resulting string.". It is worth being careful about the **bold** fragment. This can be both useful and disturbing, depending on the situation. – Mateusz Sęczkowski May 22 '20 at 12:53

1 Answers1