xpath works in selenium recording, but does not run in Eclipse

Question

I am trying to run a test in Eclipse that was previously recorded in Selenium. I was able to get it to run in Selenium by using an XPath. However, in Eclipse I get an NoSuchElement error. I am trying to click on a tab on the page, the problem is that the tabs are not listed as buttons, but they are actually in a table. Here is the line that I have in place now.

driver.findElement(By.xpath("(//div[@onclick=\"parent.frames.contentFrame.location='/messaging/maintfList.jsp?clearUIPath=true&uiPathLabel=Forms'\"])")).click();

Here is what I am shown when I inspect the element. All of the tabs are listed as menu-normal, the only difference is in the pathlabel.

div class="menu-normal" onclick="parent.frames.contentFrame.location='/messaging/maintfList.jsp?clearUIPath=true&uiPathLabel=Forms'"

Answer 1

I would try

driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("div[onclick='parent.frames.contentFrame.location='/messaging/maintfList.jsp?clearUIPath=true&uiPathLabel=Forms']")).click();

escaping anything that needs it in java.

xpath is a very inefficient way to find things, and there is almost always a better way of doing it. CssSelector in this case can find what you are looking for.

Edit: I've had a look into Java documentation, try this line instead

driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("div[onclick=\"parent.frames.contentFrame.location='/messaging/maintfList.jsp?clearUIPath=true&uiPathLabel=Forms'\"]")).click();

Answer 2

You could also try something like:

driver.findElement(By.xpath("//div[@class='menu-normal'][2]")).click();

//here [2] is the position number of menu-normal on the page. Let us assume there are 4 tabs with same class and you want to click on 2nd one then you can use above code.

If it was not helpful, please share your html code.