如何在Java Selenium中使用通配符条目进行搜索

Question

I have gone through every related question but none of them seems to provide the correct solution. I am writing a program to fetch the friend list from Facebook using selenium code. To do so, I am using for loop to scroll page down and fetch friends name link text from it using tagname keyword. While doing so, I get mutual friends and number of friends each friend have, also in the result.

I noticed that each friend id starts with js_X where X can be any value. I need to know how I can use any wild card search/Regular expression to search and fetch the results to me.

Below is my code(I know its poor programming, but please help me):

--code for opening facebook and reaching till Friendlist page here---

WebElement box = d.findElement(By.xpath(".//*[@id='pagelet_timeline_app_collection_100000641984658:2356318349:2']/ul")); **//This find the first box containing friend list**
List<WebElement> FinalList = box.findElements(By.tagName("a")); **//All Names are fetched and added in Final List** 
jse.executeScript("scroll(0, 2500)"); **//Scrolled below to second box**
Thread.sleep(15000L);
box = d.findElement(By.xpath(".//*[@id='pagelet_timeline_app_collection_100000641984658:2356318349:2']/ul[2]"));**//This finds second box and fetches all the friends name from that box**  
List<WebElement> IntermediateList; **//Temporarylist created**

for(int i=3,k=7; i<17||k<20; i++){  
    if(i<17){   
    box = d.findElement(By.xpath(".//*[@id='pagelet_timeline_app_collection_100000641984658:2356318349:2']/ul["+i+"]"));
    if(box.isDisplayed()){  
        IntermediateList = box.findElements(By.tagName("a"));
        FinalList.addAll(IntermediateList);
        jse.executeScript("scroll(0, "+k+"000)"); **//This is for increasing scroll everytime as sometimes box is further down**
        Thread.sleep(15000L);
        k++;    
     }else{     
         break;
     }
}

FinalList.addAll(IntermediateList);

Instead of tagname("a") I want to use "id" to find the friend name link text and use Regular expression/wild card in it to search.

For example : IntermediateList = box.findElements(By.id("js_(wild card parameter)"));

any Suggestion would help, Thanks in advance!!

Answer 1

You already used xpath in your example so why don't you use xpath to find the desired links?

XPATH:

IntermediateList = box.findElements(By.xpath("//*[contains(@id,'js_')]"));

(Find any element which ID contains js_ )

CSS:

IntermediateList = box.findElements(By.cssSelector("a[id^='js_']"));

(Find a link <a href...> which ID starts with js_ )