XPath //div[contains(text(), 'string')] fails to select divs containing 'string'

Question

This is the HTML code:

<div>  <span></span>  Elangovan  </div> 

I want to write an XPath for the div based on its contained text. I tried

//div[contains(text(),'Elangovan')] 

but this is not working.

Answer 1

Replace text() with string():

//div[contains(string(), "Elangovan")] 

Or, you can check that span's following text sibling contains the text:

//div[contains(span/following-sibling::text(), "Elangovan")]  

Also see:

• Difference between text() and string()