XPath - Selection TD next to the selected XPath table which contains SPAN - html

Question

I have a table and I'm trying to get data from via xpath. A simple example of the table looks like this:
horse id1 id2 id3 id4
abc 1 1 1 1
123 2 2 2 2
cba 3 3 <span>3</span> 3
321 4 4 4 4
What I want to do is look at column id3 and find the row that contains the span code (in this case it's row 3). Once I have this I would like to get the value in column 1 of that row (the one that span is on) which would be cba.
Can anyone help?

Answer 1

If you want to match tr that contains span, then you might use below XPath:
//table[1]//tr[.//span]/td[6]/a[1]
Also note that you can use less complex and more verbose expressions by using attributes of target/parent/child/sibling element.
Suppose you need to match link
<tr>
<td>
<a class="link new-link" href="/some/source">Click me!</a>
</td>
</tr>
you can use
//a[text()="Click me!"]
and
//a[#href="/some/source"]
and
//a[#class="link new-link" and text()="Click me!"]
... and a lot of other combinations

Answer 2

Try this below code.
List<WebElement> elements = driver.findElements(By.xpath("//td/span"));
for(int i=0;i<elements.size();i++)
{
System.out.println(elements.get(i).getText()); //Will give you only those data which `<td>` contains `<span>` tag.
}
Updated Answer
If you want only fourth column <td> data contains <span> tag refer below code.
suppose your html look this.
<table>
<tr>
<th>horse</th>
<th>number1</th>
<th>number2</th>
<th>number3</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>horse1</td>
<td>3424</td>
<td>data1</td>
<td>-----</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>horsename2</td>
<td>123</td>
<td><span>data2</span></td>
<td>-----</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>horsename2</td>
<td>123</td>
<td>-----</td>
<td><span>data3</span></td>
</tr>
</table>
refer this code.
int b = 1;
int[] array_list = new int[] {1,2,3}; //int b presents `<tr>` tag.
for(int i =0; i<array_list.length;i++)
{
WebElement span_source = driver.findElement(By.xpath("//th[4]/..//following::tr["+b+"]/td[4]"));
try
{
WebElement span = driver.findElement(By.xpath("//th[4]/..//following::tr["+b+"]/td[4]/span"));
System.out.println(span.getText());
}
catch(Exception e)
{
System.out.println("TD tag not contains data with span tag.");
}
b++;
}