So this is ruby right, and while I do have a solution already, which I'll show below, its not tight. Feels like I'm using ahem "C++ iterators", if you will. Too many lines of code. Not like ruby.
Anyway, I'm wondering if there is classier way to do this:
b = Watir::Browser.new
b.goto "javascriptinjectedtablevalues.com" #not real website url:)
# desired urls in list are immediately located within <span> tags with a "class" of
#"name" plus a custom html attribute attribute of "data-bind" = "name: $data". that's it
# unless I wanted to use child-selectors which I'm not very good at
allrows = b.spans(:class => "name").each_with_index.map do |x, i|
[0, x.attribute_value("data-bind")]
end
real_row_ids = allrows.select{|i, databind| databind == "name: $data" }.map(&:first) #now I have all correct span ids
spans = real_row_ids.map {|id| b.spans(:class => "name")[id] }
Now that's a little messy in my opinion. But it leaves artifacts so I can debug and go back and stuff.
I could use this command to just grab a just the spans
spans = b.spans(:class => "name").map do |span|
[span, span.attribute_value("data-bind")]
end.select {|span, databind| databind == "name: $data"}.map(&:first)
but that still feels messy having no artifacts to show for it to use for later when trying to isolate other html tags nearby the span.
I'm hoping there is something like this pseudo code for watir:
b.spans(:class => "name").with_custom_attributes(:key => "data-bind", :value => "name: $data")
that's what I'd really like to do. superman-patching this custom method onto Watir within a rails initializer would be the optimal solution second to it already existing within Watir!
Watir already supports using data attributes for locators. You simply need to replace the dashes with underscores.
For example:
b.spans(:class => 'name', :data_bind => "name: $data")
Would match elements like:
<span class="name" data-bind="name: $data">
Similarly, you can use a regex when matching the data attribute:
b.spans(:class => 'name', :data_bind => /name/)