How to Select a Web Element With an ID Containing '.'

tldr: \.

lesson learned.

i was working with a site and trying to select an element via its id e.g.

<p id="select.me.by.id">select me by my id</p>

simples, thought me:

nope.

so, i did what all good selenium debuggers do… i tried in the browser but chrome didn’t match it.

tempted though i was to blame chrome, i tried with xpath, and that worked fine:

• //p[@id='select.me.by.id']

after a bit of web searching, the solution was clear.

in css, i wasn’t saying: find the id select.me.by.id

i was saying find the id select with class mebyid which was not at all what i wanted.

fortunately, css offers escaping, which i didn’t realize.

until the app is fixed i can locate the id using css with: