How to get element's index by xpath?

Question

I've next structure :

<div id='list'>
   <div class='column'>aaa</div>
   <div class='column'>bbb</div>
   ...
   <div class='column'>jjj</div>
</div>

I was wonder if there is a ways to use XPath, and to write some query were I can get the index of the requested element within the "list" element.

I mean that I'll ask for location of class='column' where the text value is aaa and I'll get 0 or 1...

Thanks

Answer 1

You could just count the div elements preceding the element you're looking for:

count(div[@id = 'list']/div[@id = 'myid']/preceding-sibling::div)

Answer 2

You can count the preceding siblings:

count(//div[@id="list"]/div[@id="3"]/preceding-sibling::*)