Finding a link with a non-breaking space inside it with Selenium

Question

I'm getting better finding links without any id or name but this one has me stumped and a Google search hasn't helped. I'm trying to click on a link using Selenium webdriver in Java.

 <a class="mainleftlinks" onclick="return TrackChanges();" href="/chcfweb/sbc/administration/aac/leftlinks.do?linkid=040000" styleclass="mainleftlinks">&nbsp;&nbsp;Administrative &nbsp;&nbsp;Claiming</a>

Not sure what those nbsp things are. If you look at the application the link/button looks like this:

 Administrative
 Claiming

Not sure how to format the cssSelector, use xpath to find this? Use something else? I'm stumped. Any help greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

The   is a non breakable space and it needs to be included. Here are multiple ways to get your link by text:

// by link text with 2 spaces at the begining and 3 spaces in the middle
WebElement ele1 = driver.findElement(By.linkText("  Administrative   Claiming"));

// by xpath with the caracter code of ` `
WebElement ele2 = driver.findElement(By.xpath("//a[.='\u00A0\u00A0Administrative \u00A0\u00A0Claiming']"));

// by xpath by removing the ` `
WebElement ele3 = driver.findElement(By.xpath("//a[translate(.,'\u00A0','')='Administrative Claiming']"));

Answer 2

nbsp is an encoded whitespace. You don't see it in the link because it gets automatically converted into ' '. I'm not sure I've understood your question, but you can easily get that field by id or class name:

driver.findElement(By.id(yourId));

EDIT

Alternatively you could get that by class name:

List<WebElement> elements = driver.findElements(By.className(className));

Notice that this will get you back all the elements of that class. Then you can iterate them and check the text to match your case.

Answer 3

Use xpath contains. Maybe something along the lines of

driver.findElement(By.xpath("//*[contains(., 'Administrative') and contains(., 'Claiming')]"));

Answer 4

@PeterCook if you want you could use the onclick. Try

driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("*[onclick='return TrackChanges();']")).click

Do you need to use the text?

Answer 5

driver.findElement(By.xpath("//*[contains(translate(., '\u00A0', ' '), 'Administrative Claiming')]"));

有关解释，请在此处查看我的答案