XPath normalize-space example in Selenium WebDriver

In this example we will discuss about the usage of normalize-space in Xpath.

We already aware of the Functions like text(),contains(),starts-with(),last() and position() in Xpath. Refer to this link to know details about these functions. Xpath Functions.

Generally, normalize-space(String s) is a method in Xpath useful to remove any leading or trailing spaces in a String. This is also works like a trim() function in java.lang.String class. We will see different examples

<tr>
<td>
<a href="//money.rediff.com/companies/thomas-cook-i/16610005"> Thomas Cook (I) </a>
</td>
<td>A</td>
<td>244.60</td>
<td>252.95</td>
<td>
</tr>

In the above example the table data has spaces for Thomas Cook. If we use Xpath Text Function it doesnt provide any value as an output. Please check the screenshot below:

Usage of normalize-space(text()) method in Xpath.Please check the screenshot below:

Selenium WebDriver Example to fetch the price for a particular Stock:

package org.totalqa.selenium;
 
import java.util.List;
import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.NoSuchElementException;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;
public class XpathAxesLocators {
 
	public static void main(String[] args) {
		
		System.setProperty("webdriver.gecko.driver", "geckodriver.exe");
		FirefoxDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();
		driver.get("https://money.rediff.com/gainers/bse/daily/groupa?src=gain_lose");
		
		/**
		 * Solution 1 using Axes Locators
		 */
		WebElement e = driver.findElement(By.xpath("//a[normalize-space(text())='Thomas Cook (I)']/parent::td/following-sibling::td[2]"));
		try{
			if(e.isDisplayed())
			{
					String price =  e.getText();
					System.out.println("Stock Price" + price);
			}
		}
		catch(NoSuchElementException ex)
		{
			System.out.println("Stock Name Not Exists"+ ex.getMessage());
		}
		
		/**
		 * Solution 2 using findElements()
		 */
		List<WebElement> trList = driver.findElements(By.xpath(".//*[@id='leftcontainer']/table/tbody/tr/td[1]/a"));
		for(int i=0;i<trList.size();i++)
		{
			if(trList.get(i).getText().contains("Thomas Cook (I)"))
			{
				e = driver.findElement(By.xpath(".//*[@id='leftcontainer']/table/tbody/tr["+(i+1)+"/td[3]"));
				System.out.println("Stock Price:::" + e.getText());
				break;
			}
		}
		
	}
}

Therefor the extra spaces in the table data is ignored and identified the element and fetches the stock price.

Output:

Stock Price::: 244.60

Conclusion:

In the example we have learnt how to use the normalize-space in Xpath.