The XPath function $x() will always return an array, regardless of whether or not an index is specified

How can I target the div elements that have the class "month-table_col" (selecting by month).

...
<div class="month-table">
    <div class="month-table_row">
        <div class="month-table_col">Jan</div>
        <div class="month-table_col">Feb</div>
        <div class="month-table_col">Mar</div>
    </div>
    <div class="month-table_row">
        <div class="month-table_col">Apr</div>
        <div class="month-table_col">May</div>
        <div class="month-table_col">Jun</div>
    </div>
    <div class="month-table_row">
        <div class="month-table_col">Jul</div>
        <div class="month-table_col">Aug</div>
        <div class="month-table_col">Sep</div>
    </div>
    <div class="month-table_row">
        <div class="month-table_col">Oct</div>
        <div class="month-table_col">Nov</div>
        <div class="month-table_col">Dec</div>
    </div>
</div>
...

Below is the XPath code used to target the div elements, for example, to select the div containing the value 'Nov'.

//div[contains(@class, 'month-table_col') and contains(text(), 'Nov')]

Upon executing the following command in the Google Chrome console,

$x("//div[contains(@class, 'month-table_col') and contains(text(), 'Nov')]")

The result is as follows: an array with one element is returned like this

[div.month-table_col]
   0: div.month-table_col
   lastIndex:(...)
   lastItem:(...)
   length: 1
   __proto__:Array(0)

Even specifying the index of 1 yields the same outcome as mentioned above.

$x("//div[contains(@class, 'month-table_col') and contains(text(), 'Nov')][1]")

The result obtained is correct, but is there a way to retrieve the element as a tag rather than an array?

Expected output:

<div class="month-table_col">Nov</div>

Answer №1

Initially, it appears that the concept of contains() in XPath may not be fully grasped. Perhaps what is desired is @class = 'month-table_col' rather than

contains(@class, 'month-table_col')
- as contains() looks for a matching substring. Similarly, contains(text(), 'Nov') may actually be just .='Nov'. (It is generally recommended to compare the string value of an element instead of searching for child text nodes whenever possible).

Nevertheless, your issue seems to stem from the difference in operator precedence between '//' and '[]'. The expression //A[1] signifies "for every node in the document, select its first A child element if it exists". To achieve selecting the first result after all, one might use (//A)[1], where the [1] predicate is applied to the final outcome rather than each individual child::A selection.

Answer №2

The Chrome DevTools XPath console feature, known as $x(), returns an array regardless of the number of nodes selected.

To access a specific element in the array, you can use JavaScript indexing. If your XPath query fetches a single node, simply add [0] to retrieve that node from the array:

$x("//div[contains(@class, 'month-table_col') and contains(text(), 'Nov')")[0]

Important Note: Remember that XPath node sets and sequences are 1-based, while JavaScript arrays are 0-based.

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