DrupalWebTestCase::buildXPathQuery() tries to handle backreferences in argument values

This problem is also present in D8, let's fix it there first.

Good catch, supported them in this patch, and followed your advice about using preg_replace_callback(). Also added a test to cover the double slash backreferences.

I've made the 7.x patch based on the patch 5 from the previous comment.

Committed 43b389d and pushed to 8.x. Thanks!

Now #6 needs review for 7.x

Needs work for Drupal 7, as anonymous functions are only supported on PHP 5.3+ and Drupal 7 supports 5.2+.

small correction

It's not possible to do this with preg_replace_callback() in PHP 5.2. You can only create anonymous functions using create_function() but this does not allow to pass variables from the current scope, like you can do with closures in PHP5.3.

Let's try it with the venerable str_replace() instead.

Forgot to upload the test_only patch. This one should fail.

Tests fail because str_replace() does not respect the word boundary as preg_replace('//\b/') does, it also replaces :date in "xsd:dateTime" below:

$tracker_activity = $this->xpath('//tr[@about=:url]//td[contains(@property, "dc:modified") and contains(@property, "sioc:last_activity_date") and contains(@datatype, "xsd:dateTime") and @content=:date]', array(':url' => $url, ':date' => $isoDate));

We have to respect these word boundaries.