selenium - Is it okay to use such xpath to find web elements?

Question

Consider this xpath which should always return one element.

//div[@id='MyDiv123']/div[contains(@class, 'super')]

Assume that we won't add anymore divs whose class is super. Given that info, I don't think that it is a good idea to use /div[contains(@class, 'super')]because the xpath will break if div[contains(@class, 'super')] is placed inside another element.

Shouldn't we be using //div[contains(@class, 'super')] instead ?

Answer 1

I don't like using XPaths for locators that can be written as a CSS selector. I think it's much simpler as

#MyDiv123 > div.super

or just

div.super

if it's unique on the page.

XPath contains() is a string match. All the elements below will match your XPath locator but none of them will match the CSS selectors above.

<div class="super-duper" ...>
<div class="superior" ...>
<div class="abcsuperdef" ...>

... you get the idea...