Getting unexpected result when using element.all(by.xpath()) to read table data

[akbbhatt]

My application contains two mat-tables on it.
I would like to read the table data from my second table

await this.secondTableElement.all(by.xpath(//tr[${rowIndex}]/td[${columnIndex}]));

but this statement actually provides me the data from the first table and not from the secondtableElement. I believe when you execute all() method under a parent element, protractor is supposed to search under this element and not from the very beginning of the HTML document.

[akbbhatt]

Thanks for the reply Funn347. Sorry for providing such a bad example.
So you mean to tell that if I do something like this also:

this.secondTableElement.all(by.xpath('//waybackassets.bk21.net/20260217045122/https://tr'))

then I will get "tr"s from all the tables from the page? I was with the impression that protractor will search for tr's only under this secondTableElement.

This one: await this.secondTableElement.all(by.css('tbody>tr')).getText()

gave me rows from only the second table as I expected.

[Fuun347]

Well it will only search for them inside of the parent, yes. I deleted the comment as it was not exactly correct. Are you selecting the table correctly? Does this.secondTableElement reference the correct table?

[akbbhatt]

Yes Funn347, I double-checked, in both the cases the this.secondTableElement is referring to the second occurring table only.

[Fuun347]

Then there is no reason why this should be selecting the wrong table. Have you tried using by.css rather than by.xpath?

[akbbhatt]

Yes, it works using by.css but not working with by.xpath.

[Fuun347]

Xpath is not recommended at all for any use by the protractor team. This is a section from the protractor style guide

which you can locate here https://www.protractortest.org/#/style-guide.
Generally I've had issues with xpath before so I absolutely never use it. I'm not sure if this here is a bug or just xpath's broken behavior, but if you can go by without using it, then do go that route.