Fitnesse & XPath - Count() does not return an integer, returns the list instead

Question

When using Fitnesse, Slim and the Browser Testing framework I was given the challenge to count the amount of items within an ordered list (simplified):

<a>
    <b>1</b>
    <b>2</b>
    <b>3</b>
</a>

I found that one of the counting methods:

|check |number of items |xpath=//b |in |xpath=//a |3 |

does not work since it would only test for the number of times text appears upon a webpage, not the element. Thus I was pointed to the counting function of xpath but that returns the list of items instead of the total amount of occurrences, as seen below:

|check |value of        |xpath=//ol[count(li)=3] |[<b>1</b>
                                                   <b>2</b>
                                                   <b>3</b>] expected: [3] |

As such, how would I be able to get an integer of the count of occurrences of a certain element?

Answer 1

You have to wrap the entire xpath with count as shown below.

Considered ol with `class="nav-links" for the below explanation.

count(//ol[@class='nav-links']/li)

Checking the number of li under the above said ol in chrome Elements tab.

Note: you don't get any output if you try count(xpath) in Elements tab.

To see the count just tested the xpath in the chrome Console tab.