XPath ordered priority attribute search
- by user94000
I want to write an XPath that can return some link elements on an HTML DOM.
The syntax is wrong, but here is the gist of what I want:
//web:link[@text='Login' THEN_TRY @href='login.php' THEN_TRY @index=0]
THEN_TRY is a made-up operator, because I can't find what operator(s) to use. If many links exist on the page for the given set of [attribute=name] pairs, the link which matches the most left-most attribute(s) should be returned instead of any others.
For example, consider a case where the above example XPath finds 3 links that match any of the given attributes:
link A: text='Sign In', href='Login.php', index=0
link B: text='Login', href='Signin.php', index=15
link C: text='Login', href='Login.php', index=22
Link C ranks as the best match because it matches the First and Second attributes.
Link B ranks second because it only matches the First attribute.
Link A ranks last because it does not match the First attribute; it only matches the Second and Third attributes.
The XPath should return the best match, Link C.
If more than one link were tied for "best match", the XPath should return the first best link that it found on the page.
