Writing Effective XPath

Tips for writing effective XPath

The practices below can help us write an effective XPath. They have already been discussed in the course so far:

• Always use relative XPath; it starts with (//).

• Look for unique id or name attributes, or combinations using XPath operators (or, and, etc ).

• Use function or a combination of functions (contains, text(), etc.) and attributes for writing the XPath expression.

• Look for sibling, ancestors, descendants or parents to identify the web element uniquely.

• Avoid using text comparison to locate as much as possible, since any change in the text will break the XPath.

• Avoid using any dynamic attribute to locate the XPath. Rather, use the techniques discussed in the earlier lessons to identify the element uniquely.

• Avoid using absolute XPath (/), always use relative XPath (//).