What is the correct XPath for choosing attributes

Question

Given this XML, what XPath returns all elements whose prop attribute contains Foo (the first three nodes):

<bla>
 <a prop="Foo1"/>
 <a prop="Foo2"/>
 <a prop="3Foo"/>
 <a prop="Bar"/>
</bla>

Answer 1

//a[contains(@prop,'Foo')]

Works if I use this XML to get results back.

<bla>
 <a prop="Foo1">a</a>
 <a prop="Foo2">b</a>
 <a prop="3Foo">c</a>
 <a prop="Bar">a</a>
</bla>

Edit: Another thing to note is that while the XPath above will return the correct answer for that particular xml, if you want to guarantee you only get the "a" elements in element "bla", you should as others have mentioned also use

/bla/a[contains(@prop,'Foo')]

This will search you all "a" elements in your entire xml document, regardless of being nested in a "blah" element

//a[contains(@prop,'Foo')]  

I added this for the sake of thoroughness and in the spirit of stackoverflow. :)

Answer 2

Have you tried something like:

//a[contains(@prop, "Foo")]

I've never used the contains function before but suspect that it should work as advertised...

Answer 3

This XPath will give you all nodes that have attributes containing 'Foo' regardless of node name or attribute name:

//attribute::*[contains(., 'Foo')]/..

Of course, if you're more interested in the contents of the attribute themselves, and not necessarily their parent node, just drop the /..

//attribute::*[contains(., 'Foo')]

Answer 4

/bla/a[contains(@prop, "foo")]

Answer 5

If you also need to match the content of the link itself, use text():

//a[contains(@href,"/some_link")][text()="Click here"]

Answer 6

John C is the closest, but XPath is case sensitive, so the correct XPath would be:

/bla/a[contains(@prop, 'Foo')]