[Webtest] Am I using XPATH correctly?

[Paul King]

Did relaxing the XPath to ignore the incorrect parts of
the HTML work?

Cheers, Paul.

dlundin@aol.com wrote:
> Mittie,
>  
> I don't have any way of modifying the html code ... is there anything 
> else I can do?
>  
> Thanks
> Doug 
>  
> -----Original Message-----
> From: dierk.koenig@canoo.com
> To: webtest@lists.canoo.com
> Sent: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 12:05 PM
> Subject: RE: [Webtest] Am I using XPATH correctly?
> 
> Hi,
>  
> your html code isn't fully correct. It misses a tbody elements to 
> enclose the tr tabs.
> The browsers don't mind but the html parser that comes with htmlunit 
> puts those missing elements in the dom.
> You may profit from relaxing your your XPATH a bit like
>     string(//div[@id='etContent']/form//tr[1]/td[2]//b[1])
> that also makes it easier to maintain
>  
> Xpath engines differ slightly between stylus, XPE, and HtmlUnit but this 
> is unlikely to be the source of your problem.
>  
> cheers
> Mittie
> 
>     -----Original Message-----
>     *From:* webtest-admin@lists.canoo.com
>     [mailto:webtest-admin@lists.canoo.com]*On Behalf Of *dlundin@aol.com
>     *Sent:* Donnerstag, 13. Juli 2006 19:12
>     *To:* webtest@lists.canoo.com
>     *Subject:* [Webtest] Am I using XPATH correctly?
> 
>     Hello all,
>      
>     I have a webpage I am trying to use WebTest/XPATH to extract a
>     value. I've cut-and-pasted the html in this post. I've confirmed the
>     XPATH is correct using XPATH Explorer and Stylus tools.
>      
>     Here are some things I've seen:
>     - The value I'm trying to grab is within a bold tag
>     - The value is preceeded and succeeded by embedded tab characters (I
>     can't change)
>      
>     Here's the XPATH (I've also removed the string function and given an
>     absolute path - no change):
>     string(//div[@id='etContent']/form[1]/table[1]/tr[2]/td[2]/div[1]/table[1]/tr[1]/td[1]/table[2]/tr[1]/td[1]/table[1]/tr[1]/td[2]/font[1]/b[1])
>      
>     My WebTest script does not report an error but, instead, appears to
>     show a blank value (could this be the result of the tab?)
>      
>     Is this an XPATH 1.0 vs. 2.0 issue? Does WebTest use XPATH 1.0 or 2.0?
>      
>     I'm stumped - help, please.
>      
>     Thanks
>      
>      
>     -----------------
>     <table border="0" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1" width=100%
>     bgcolor="#999999">
>           <tr>
>                 <td bgcolor="#cccccc" height="30"><b>Last<br>Price</b></td>
>                 <td nowrap bgcolor="#ffffcc"><font size="3"><b>
>                      
>                            
>                                  
>                                        
>                                        
>                                               14.20
>                                        
>                                  
>                            
>                            
>                      
>                 </b></font>
>                 </td>
>      
>      
>     ---------------------
>     ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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