How should I find the XPath using selenium webdriver and protractor

Question

I'm a beginner in automation testing. I'm trying to select a value from data list and I got an XPath like mentioned below:

XPath : html/body/div[2]/div[1]/div/div[1]

This is the HTML for the same :

<input id="portfolioName" class="form-control ng-valid ng-dirty ng-valid-parse ng-touched" ng-model="vm.portfolioName" 
name="portfolioName[]" autocomplete="off" 
list="portfolioNameList" ng-change="vm.onPortfolioNameChange()" onclick="this.value='';" 
style="" type="text"/>

When I execute the test case, it displays No such element found exception

How do I resolve this problem? I'm using Selenium and protractor.

• Kristjan: You can also open your website, go to developer tools, right click on element -> copy -> copy xpath

Answer 1

Avoid the use of 'Absolute XPath' if possible in your coding.

If your element is having with class, ID, name & Type attributes then try to locate the element with the use of Relative XPath.

You can use-

XPath: //input[@id='portfolioName']

OR

XPath: //input[@id='portfolioName'][@type='text']

OR

Xpath=//input[@type='text' AND @name='portfolioName[]']

OR

Xpath=//input[contains(@id,'portfolioName')]

Best & easy way to locate Element with ID attribute is By ID:

driver.findElement(By.id("portfolioName"));

Answer 2

An absolute XPath should start with a slash /: '/html/body/div[2]/div[1]/div/div[1]'.

It is advised to use relative XPath like: '//div[@id="portfolioName"]'. For this to work, the id has to be unique for div tags.

However if the id is unique, you can better identify the object by id and not XPath:

driver.findElement(By.id("portfolioName"))

Answer 3

Say "No" to XPaths, to quote the Protractor style guide:

• It's the slowest and most brittle locator strategy of all
• Markup is very easily subject to change and therefore xpath locators require a lot of maintenance
• xpath expressions are unreadable and very hard to debug

There are better, faster and more readable ways to locate the element:

element(by.id("portfolioName"));
element(by.model("vm.portfolioName"));

If you are testing an Angular application with Protractor, in theory you should not experience timing issues since Protractor and Angular work together in sync - Angular signals Protractor when it is "ready". But, if you do experience timing issues, you can always add a wait - e.g. waiting for the element to be present:

var portfolioName = element(by.id("portfolioName"));
var EC = protractor.ExpectedConditions;
browser.wait(EC.presenceOf(portfolioName), 5000);

Answer 4

The input element has an id, better use this then the path from the html element to the input element. This path could change as the rendering is in a different state and or as the elements are injected in a different order each time.

Your Xpath could be: //*[@id="portfolioName"]

I would also research CSS selectors to use instead of Xpath as they are faster, easier to read and more flexible. Learn about all the other selectors and use XPath as a last resort.