1. How to Represent Any Text in Selenium XPath's text() Method? #

If you want to target elements that contain any non-empty text content, here are practical approaches:

• Match elements with non-empty normalized text (ignores whitespace-only content):

  //*[normalize-space(text()) != '']
  

  This selects elements where text—after stripping leading/trailing whitespace and collapsing internal spaces—isn’t empty.

• Match elements that have any text node (even whitespace-only):

  //*[text()]
  

  Use this only if you don’t mind including elements with just spaces or newlines.

• Target elements containing a specific substring alongside any other text:

  //*[contains(text(), 'toys')]
  

  This picks elements where "toys" appears anywhere in the text, regardless of surrounding content.

2. XPath for Matching Variable Numbers and Store Names #

Your original expression targets a fixed string, but since 50 (number of toys) and Delhi (store name) are variable, here are two reliable solutions:

Option 1: Using XPath 2.0+ (Regex with matches()) #

Most modern browsers (Chrome, Firefox) support XPath 2.0 features in Selenium. Use a regular expression to handle variable parts:

//*[matches(normalize-space(text()), '^Showing all \d+ toys available at .+ store$')]

• \d+ matches one or more digits (covers any number like 50, 10, 100)
• .+ matches any sequence of characters (covers any store name like Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore)
• ^ and $ ensure the entire normalized text matches the pattern (prevents partial matches)

Option 2: XPath 1.0 Compatible (No Regex) #

If you’re working with an environment that only supports XPath 1.0, combine starts-with(), contains(), and ends-with() to target fixed string segments:

//*[
  starts-with(normalize-space(text()), 'Showing all ')
  and contains(normalize-space(text()), ' toys available at ')
  and ends-with(normalize-space(text()), ' store')
]

This works by verifying three fixed parts of the text, letting the variable number and store name sit in between without breaking the match.

内容的提问来源于stack exchange，提问作者Sagar Ajmire