Željko Filipin's Blog on Software and Testing

Imagine that you have two links. Both links are the same.

<a>text</a>

The only thing that makes them different is that the second one is located after an image.

<a>text</a>
<img src="image.png" />
<a>text</a>

Of course, you just have to click the second link. You have already tried this.

browser.link(:text, "text").click

But, it always clicks the first link. There is a way.

browser.link(:after?, browser.image(:src, /image/)).click

This is so cool.

(You will need Watir 1.5. Bret Pettichord posted that at wtr-general.)

Don’t you just love all those betas? There is another one! New Watir User Guide (Beta). Check it out and let me know what you think about it. It is just a first draft. Please, be polite. It is just a baby.

I have XML that looks like this.

I need to get value of hash attribute (BF8E8F60E722E92C7ED8303916591AB4). I know the value of m url parameter (inside url attribute) (7fb83717-9606-4022-bd4e-67b6f6582ada), but I do not know the value of code url parameter.

I know how to get attribute of a tag when I know another attribute of that tag. For example, if I knew hash attribute and needed url attribute, I would do it like this:

e = REXML::Document.new(ie.text).root.elements
e["/tokens/ShortUrl[@hash='BF8E8F60E722E92C7ED8303916591AB4']“].attributes["url"]
=> “resetpassword.aspx?m=7fb83717-9606-4022-bd4e-67b6f6582ada&code=2271ad0e-d627-4e6c-bdfb-2b11d354e9ac”

But, I know only part of url attribute. Of course, this does not work (because e[...] returns nil).

e["/tokens/ShortUrl[@url='resetpassword.aspx?m=7fb83717-9606-4022-bd4e-67b6f6582ada&code=']“].attributes["hash"]
=> NoMethodError: undefined method `attributes’ for nil:NilClass

I have heard that there are XPath string functions, but I did not understand how to use them, or would it even help in this case.

I have solved this problem with regular expressions, but I guess there must be XPath solution.

Also, I have already asked my developer to simplify that XML, so I can use it, but that has low priority because I have already solved the problem.

Angrez Singh was kind enough to help me. This is the solution.

e["/tokens/ShortUrl[starts-with(@url, 'resetpassword.aspx?m=7fb83717-9606-4022-bd4e-67b6f6582ada&code=')]“].attributes["hash"]
=> “BF8E8F60E722E92C7ED8303916591AB4″

You can find this thread at wtr-general.