What is the correct syntax for using a variable and following-sibling in Python Selenium?

Question

I'm using Python and Selenium Webdriver.

I have the following code which works as expected:

driver.find_element_by_xpath('//p[text()="text"]/../following-sibling::td/div/div/table/tbody/tr/td/a[@class ="class_name"]')

I would like to change the above "text" to a variable, similar to the below:

driver.find_element_by_xpath('//p[text()="%s"] % variable_name/../following-sibling::td/div/div/table/tbody/tr/td/a[@class ="class_name"]')

This doesn't work as it isn't a valid XPath express. Can anyone help with the correct coding please?

Edit: Also, if there is a way to search for text in the follow-sibling that would also be useful. Something similar to:

 driver.find_element_by_xpath('//p[text()="%s"] % variable_name/../following-sibling:[div@text()= "text"]')

Answer 1

When you wrote '//p[text()="%s"] % variable_name/../following-sibling::td/div/div/table/tbody/tr/td/a[@class ="class_name"]', you created a string that literally contains %s and % variable_name. The % operator and the variable(s) to be substituted go outside of the string literal:

'//p[text()="%s"]/../following-sibling::td/div/div/table/tbody/tr/td/a[@class ="class_name"]' % variable_name