XPath using classname and contains text

Question

I was looking for an answer to how to find an element that has a class and contains text.

I've got two answers.

• //div[@class='credit_summary_item' and contains(text(),'Professor']: as in HTML XPath Searching by class and text
• //div[contains(@class, 'credit_summary_item') and contains(., 'Professor')]: as in XPath to match @class value and element value?

For me, only 2nd answer worked. Can anyone pls explain the difference for 'contains text' part.? As both answers don't mention it.

Answer 1

For a demonstration consider the following HTML:

<div class="credit_summary_item">Professor</div>

There is:

• Only one value of the class attribute i.e. credit_summary_item.
• And the innerText i.e. Professor contains no leading and trailing spaces.

So, to locate this element you can use either of the following solutions:

• Using text():

  //div[@class='credit_summary_item' and text()='Professor']
  

• Using contains():

  //div[@class='credit_summary_item' and contains(., 'Professor')]
  

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This usecase

But in your usecase it seems contains(@class, 'credit_summary_item') worked which implies the element have multiple classes. So apart from credit_summary_item there are some other values present as class attributes.