Finding WebElement by Link Text that starts-with

Question

I'm trying to find a given link WebElement by partial link text but I want to leverage starts-with to make it more robust. The WebElement I am trying to find is the second one in the following list ...

<a id="" class="" onmouseout="" href="some.random.href" target="" onmousedown="" onmouseup="" onmouseover="" title="" onclick=""> nsfoobar:80</a>
<a id="" class="" onmouseout="" href="some.other.random.href" target="" onmousedown="" onmouseup="" onmouseover="" title="" onclick=""> sfoobar:443</a>

I thought finding it by xpath and starts-with would be a good approach but it's throwing a NoSuchElementException ...

sfoobarXpath = "//a[starts-with(.,' sfoobar:')]";
driver.findElement(By.xpath(sfoobarXpath)).click();

Any idea what I'm doing wrong here?

EDIT1: Edited example to better illustrate problem

EDIT2: I need to be able to find this WebElement without knowledge of the text of the other WebElement; in my actual environment, there can be any number of these link elements and they're subject to change.

Answer 1

Try this xpath expression:

**//a[normalize-space(substring-before(.,':'))='sfoobar']**

substring-before(.,':') retrieves the text content of the WebElement before the colon character.

normalize-space() removes the leading whitespace from the WebElement.

Answer 2

Use the xpath contains() function

//a[contains(text(),'sfoobar')]

Edit

According to the OP's edit

//a[contains(text(),'sfoobar')and not(contains(text(),'nsfoobar'))]

Answer 3

As per the html you have given in your question, and your requirement of using starts-with , you can try the below xpath:

//a[not(starts-with(text(),' n'))]

Note:- The above will select the link that doesn't have innerHTML or text starting with " n" (there is a space before 'n' as is given in the html so provided) .

Answer 4

I ended up just finding all the link elements by partial link text and iterating through that list to find the one with substring before the : that exactly equals sfoobar . It's not the most elegant solution but it seems to work ...

List<WebElement> links = driver.findElements(By.partialLinkText("sfoobar"));
if(links.isEmpty()) {
    throw new RuntimeException("Cannot find any links.");           
}
else {
    for(WebElement link:links) {
        if(StringUtils.substringBefore(link.getText(),":").equals("sfoobar")) {
            link.click();
            break;
        }
    }
}