InvalidSelectorException when select element for Python Selenium with xpath

Question

I have this html snippet:

<div class="btn">
 <a href="javascript:void(0)" class="S_btn_b" node-type="OK">
 <span>确定</span>
 </a>
</div>

And I want to select the 确定 element and click it. I tried the following selector with xpath:

confirm_btn = driver.find_element_by_xpath('//div[@class="btn"]//span[text()="确定"]')

But the program just complain that that is not a valid selector with this Exception:

Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "test.py", line 63, in <module>
 ac.move_to_element(driver.find_element_by_xpath('//div[@class="btn"]/span[text()="确定"'))
 File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 230, in find_element_by_xpath
 return self.find_element(by=By.XPATH, value=xpath)
 File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 662, in find_element
 {'using': by, 'value': value})['value']
 File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 173, in execute
 self.error_handler.check_response(response)
 File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/errorhandler.py", line 166, in check_response
 raise exception_class(message, screen, stacktrace)
selenium.common.exceptions.InvalidSelectorException

Did I do something wrong ?

• Mathias Müller: What happens if you try with only '//div[@class="btn"]//span'?
• armnotstrong: @MathiasMüller it seems ok when not specify the text() of span may be the quote sign case the problem?
• Mathias Müller: No, but it seems those characters (Chinese?) are not supported.
• armnotstrong: hmm, but I can use the find_element_by_link_text(u'确定') like that, and yes, they are Chinese characters, weird, though.
• armnotstrong: @Louis spark idea ! I have tried this find_element_by_xpath(u'//div[@class="btn"]//span[text()="确定"]') and it worked. You should answer this problem so that I can accept it :-)

Answer 1

If you do not mark your XPath expression as Unicode, the Hanzi will get mangled when the search command is sent to the browser and the search will search for something else than what you want so mark your XPath expression as Unicode:

confirm_btn = driver.find_element_by_xpath(u'//div[@class="btn"]//span[text()="确定"]')