Question

This is a common question to a problem that I have been able to mitigate up until now.

Given that the dynamic html/php is heavy with dependencies and is as such unchangeable.

My page source looks like so

 <div id="unique">
    <div id="ambiguous">
       <a href="EditMS(unique record num)">Edit</a> <!--Javascript-->
    </div>
    <div id="ambiguous">
       <a href="EditApple(unique record num)">Edit</a> <!--Javascript-->    
    </div>
 </div>

I’ve had ambiguous issues in the past and have been able to mitigate them by executing the underlying javascript but feel now that I cannot because of the dynamic record numbers.

Question one: Can I use xpath or some such to access the correct Edit link?
Question two: Can I somehow get the dynamic record number, and then execute the javascript?

Answer 1

There are a couple ways to do it with css. You can grab all of the matching ids, or if the link hrefs are always like that, you can use css attribute matching. For instance:

find('#unique').all('#ambiguous').each do |ambiguous| 
  # conditions in here
end

Or you can use ^= for match beginning, *= for match somewhere, and $= for match end

find('a[href^="Edit"]') or find('a[href*="Apple"]')

Hope that helps. I see a regex to get the value in your near future. Like:

"EditApple293845093405983049".match(/\d+/)[0]
# => 293845093405983049