Driver exception for xpath

Issues/Bugs
1

Hello,
I’m experiencing an issue when dealing with some complex xpaths in Appium.

At the attempt to locate the following element:
“findElement(By.xpath (”//android.widget.RelativeLayout/*[contains(@text,‘abc’)]/following::android.widget.TextView[1]")); "

I get the error: “ClassCastException: java.util.ArrayList$ListItr cannot be cast to org.eclipse.wst.xml.xpath2.processor”.

The reason for that error is the “/following::android.widget.TextView[1]”".
Once I remove that part from the above xpath, the error goes away.

Unfortunately there’s no other identifiers available for that element.

Please advise on the issue.

2
3

Nope…
I did replace all the * with values, but had exactly the same error… :frowning:

4

Also how do I use the uiautomator/UiSelector to replicate the functionality of the “/following::” ?

5

→ see UiSelector  |  Android Developers

6

@Aleksei, thank you for your response!
I checked out the url and all possible methods available in there, but was unable to find anything that could be similar to “/following::”.

If possible could you pls re-write the above xpath selector by using uiautomator/UiSelector functionality?

PS: I wouldn’t want to downgrade Appium due to these issues and want to ask if there’s any way to enforce usage of xpath1.0 instead of xpath2.0 for Appium?

7

Have you eventually tried the enforceXPath1 setting from my comment above?

8

@mykola-mokhnach
Yes, I added “enforceXPath1=true” to the driver’s capabilities, but it made no difference :frowning:

9

This is not a capability, but a setting. Settings works differently: https://appium.io/docs/en/advanced-concepts/settings/

10

@mykola-mokhnach,
When I do:

driver.setSetting(“enforceXPath1”,true);

I get another error:

Setting ‘enforceXPath1’ is not supported. Only the following settings are supported: [actionAcknowledgmentTimeout, allowInvisibleElements, ignoreUnimportantViews, elementResponseAttributes…

11

This is happening because you use an older version of it. Consider switching to Appium 2 to get access to the most recent uia2 driver version. appium 1 has not been maintained for months

12

One more question.
Do I understand it correctly that the functionality of uiautomator/UiSelector does not have anything to match the functionality of the xpath axis “/following::”?

13

for me it looks like
childSelector should work

14

childSelector looks for child widgets under a specific parent widget. That element has no children, and that’s why childSelector won’t work.

15

Share page source and point to el your need.

16

I was able to resolve this by setting “enforceXPath1” to true (appium v8.3.0)