Xpath to get the second url with the corresponding text in the href tag

Question

The html page has page links, 1 at the top of the page, and the other at the bottom below.

Using HtmlUnit, I am currently getting HtmlAnchor on the page using getByAnchorText("1");

Some links above have a problem, so I want to link to lower links using XPath.

 nextPageAnchor = (HtmlAnchor) page.getByXPath(""); 

How can I link to the second link on the page using xpath?

I need to reference the link using AnchorText, so the link is like:

 <a href="....">33</a> 

href has random text and is a javascript function, so I have no idea what it will be.

Is this possible with xpath?

Answer 1

To select the second element a anywhere in the document:

 (//a)[2] 

To select the second element a with specific text in the href attribute:

 (//a[@href='...'])[2] 

Note that parentheses are needed and that the expression //a[2] will not do what you intend: it will select all a elements that are the second element a any parent. If your input

 <p>Link <a href="one.html">One</a></p> <p>Link <a href="two.html">Two</a> and <a href="three.html">Three</a>.</p> <p>Link <a href="four.html">Four</a> and <a href="five.html">Five</a>.</p> 

(//a)[2] will return the second link (two.html), and //a[2] will return the third and fifth links (three.html and five.html), since both of them are the second a child ancestor.

Answer 2

It is pretty simple:

  (//a)[2] 

the //a gets all the bindings on the page, and [2] gets the second (it is single-index, not null-indexed, so 2 is actually the second, not the third, as you would expect with an array, for example)

If you want to get a link to text 33 , you can use:

  //a[./text() = "33"] 

See http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath/ for a full definition of xpath.

EDIT

To respond to Alexander's comment, you can use

  (//a[./text() = "33"])[2] 

First select all the <a> tags with text 33, and then select the second one.

EDIT 2

NOTE. The location path // para [1] does not mean the same as the path / descendant of the location :: para [1]. The latter selects the first descendant paragraph element; the first selects all descendant elements that are the first pair of children of their parents.

Marcus is really right. The above quote refers to the xPath definition mentioned above.