Run text() of Xpath in selenium

Question

I am going through selenium practice where xpath validates in firefox xpath extesion but not in python selenium.

eg go to here and apply xpath //span[@class='tableNode']/text()[preceding-sibling::br and following-sibling::br] it works in firefox extension but not in selenium expression like driver.find_elements_by_xpath("//span[@class='tableNode']/text()[preceding-sibling::br and following-sibling::br]")

Exception i am facing

    Traceback (most recent call last):
      Debug Probe, prompt 17, line 1
      File "C:\Python27\ArcGIS10.3\Lib\site-packages\selenium\webdriver\remote\webdriver.py", line 270, in find_elements_by_xpath
        return self.find_elements(by=By.XPATH, value=xpath)
      File "C:\Python27\ArcGIS10.3\Lib\site-packages\selenium\webdriver\remote\webdriver.py", line 739, in find_elements
        {'using': by, 'value': value})['value']
      File "C:\Python27\ArcGIS10.3\Lib\site-packages\selenium\webdriver\remote\webdriver.py", line 201, in execute
        self.error_handler.check_response(response)
      File "C:\Python27\ArcGIS10.3\Lib\site-packages\selenium\webdriver\remote\errorhandler.py", line 181, in check_response
        raise exception_class(message, screen, stacktrace)
    selenium.common.exceptions.InvalidSelectorException: Message: The given selector //span[@class='tableNode']/text()[preceding-sibling::br and following-sibling::br] is either invalid or does not result in a WebElement. The following error occurred:
    InvalidSelectorError: The result of the xpath expression "//span[@class='tableNode']/text()[preceding-sibling::br and following-sibling::br]" is: [object Text]. It should be an element.

Any help is welcome.

Answer 1

Selenium evaluate only web elements. text() function returns an object. the solution is to execute xpath in javascript function and return its value into variable. for ex, for python:

returnText = []
returnText = driver.execute_script("return  document.evaluate(\"//span[@class='tableNode']/text()[preceding-sibling::br and following-sibling::br]\", document, null, XPathResult.STRING_TYPE, null).stringValue;")

for item in returnText:
    print item

Answer 2

For multiple returning record:

driver.get("http://www.hotleathers.com/Front-Printed-T-Shirts-C1232.aspx?s=OrderBy%20ASC&&v=all")

returnText = []
returnText = self.driver.execute_script("var iterator = document.evaluate(\"//span[@class='tableNode']/text()[preceding-sibling::br and following-sibling::br]\", document, null, XPathResult.ORDERED_NODE_ITERATOR_TYPE, null ); var arrayXpath = new Array();  var thisNode = iterator.iterateNext(); while (thisNode) {arrayXpath.push(thisNode.textContent);  thisNode = iterator.iterateNext(); }    return arrayXpath;")

for item in returnText:
    print item

Pure Javascript code is:

var iterator = document.evaluate('//span[@class='tableNode']/text()[preceding-sibling::br and following-sibling::br]", documentNode, null, XPathResult.UNORDERED_NODE_ITERATOR_TYPE, null );

try {
  var thisNode = iterator.iterateNext();

  while (thisNode) {
    alert( thisNode.textContent );
    thisNode = iterator.iterateNext();
  } 
}
catch (e) {
  dump( 'Error: Document tree modified during iteration ' + e );
}