Finding column with certain text works using xpath but fails with cssSelector

Question

I was trying to locate table column containing text 'Name', and it fails while using cssSelector with 'Unable to locate element' but works with XPath.

I tried all the 3 below options with different browsers but it throws error:

driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("td:contains('Name')"));
driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("td[textContent = 'Name']"));
driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("td[innerText = 'Name']"));

Whereas same can be located by XPath:

driver.findElement(By.xpath("//td[contains(text(),'Name')]"));

Can anyone explain please why it is failing for the css and is there anything which I am missing out?

• QAMember: Hello, Swetha Singh, can you please share your html code

Answer 1

cssSelector does not have selector that works with text. That's why it does not work :)

You need to use an alternate way. Why not xpath if it works fine? Or hierarchical CSS approach. That should work fine as well.