使用动态ID定位元素

Question

If you have an element in a page as follows (there are multiple select elements)

<select size="1" name="j_id0:j_id2:j_id37:j_id38:0:j_id41">
<select size="1" name="j_id0:j_id2:j_id37:j_id38:1:j_id41">

With the only identifier being its name but the name will change dynamically how would you locate it in selenium(java) without referencing the name?

I am currently using the xpath as follows

/html/body/div/div[2]/table/tbody/tr/td[2]/form/div[3]/div/div/div/div[2]/div[1]/span[3]/select

Problem being if anything on the page changes this xpath will be break.

Are there any better alternative ways which are less easily broken?

Answer 1

You've correctly noted that the presented XPath is quite fragile. It would be also useful to see the complete HTML of the page, or, at least, preceding and following elements of the select element. From what we have now, you can rely on the part of the name attribute:

//select[contains(@name, "j_id")]

Answer 2

I suppose not all ids on your site are dynamic.

So there is definitely a cleaner way to write your locator.

Provide some more of your html structure and I can give you more details.

Answer 3

Give a try.. These select tags must have some labels associated. Use following-siblings and ancestor xpath axis to locate your element relative to the labels.

http://www.w3schools.com/xpath/xpath_axes.asp