How to find an element by name/text/value that includes something?

[Liudas]

So of course before posting this I've searched on this forum as well as read through Appium-Ruby library, but I couldn't figure something I know I've done in the past and I can't remember how I did it:

how to find an element that includes some string or an integer in it's name/text/value ..?
For example find_element(:name, includes"Something here that is part of the entire name").click
I've found this "(Textfield) textfield_include(text) Get the first textfield that includes text." but can't figure out how to actually write it.

The reason why I need this is because too many times xpaths change if something happens within the application and I do not want to rely on them. For example instead of pointing to xpath xxxxxxxx/cell1 I'd rather just look for an element that has something in it's name. Hope it manes sense.

As always, thank you!

[RamS]

You can do it using UiSelector parameter inside FindElementByAndroidUIAutomator

Ex : findElementByAndroidUIAutomator("new UiSelector().textContains(\""+partialtext+"\")")

More details on UISelector @ http://developer.android.com/reference/android/support/test/uiautomator/UiSelector.html#descriptionContains(java.lang.String)

[Liudas]

@RamS i forgot to mention that I am doing this for iOS platform.

[Chris_Billante]

You can use regular expressions. For example, if you are looking for a button "Low Resolution" with a label, name/txt, ID etc...
You can do something like this:

@driver.find_element(:name => /^Low/)

This will find the first element with "Low" at the beginning of its name

For reference:
http://ruby-doc.org/core-2.1.1/Regexp.html

[Liudas]

Hello @Chris_Billante,

I tried using your suggestion, but I just can't get it to work.
I am trying the following (element_name value is being passed in):

wait { find_element(:name => /'^' + element_name/).displayed?}

also tried the following:

wait { find_element(:name, Regexp.new('^' + element_name)).displayed?}

Any ideas what else I could try?

[Gery]

Hello @Liudas

I`m using something like this in C# and it works fine for me, i think if you cannot make findbyName work, you should also try Xpath in iOS it might be a bit slower but it will find the first element with the specific text : mDriver.FindElementByXPath("//*[@name='" + text + "']");

You can change @name with value or id if it is the case, or even create a method that searchers via all 3 until it finds a results with at least one of them.

or you could try : XPath = "//*[contains(@value='page 1 of')]" this will not search an exact match but a text that contains the given string.

You can also use this if you want multiple elements found by adding them to a List<>

Regards,
-Gery-

[eswaran88]

Try this way.

driver.findElement(By.xpath("//android.widget.TextView[@text='ADD']"))

[sachin925]

Hey @Liudas

Use this
//[contains(text(),’’)]
//[contains(@id,’’)]
//*[contains(@xpath,’’)]
etc

[Rajesh_RK]

Hey Liudas,

You can build xpath like contains text like below

driver.findElement(By.xpath("//contains[text(),“xyz”)

Hope this helps