Javascript get XPath of a node

Question

Is there anyway to return an XPath string of a DOM element in Javascript?

Answer 1

I refactored this from another example. It will attempt to check or there is for sure a unique id and if so use that case to shorten the expression.

function createXPathFromElement(elm) {      var allNodes = document.getElementsByTagName('*');      for (var segs = []; elm && elm.nodeType == 1; elm = elm.parentNode)      {          if (elm.hasAttribute('id')) {                  var uniqueIdCount = 0;                  for (var n=0;n < allNodes.length;n++) {                      if (allNodes[n].hasAttribute('id') && allNodes[n].id == elm.id) uniqueIdCount++;                      if (uniqueIdCount > 1) break;                  };                  if ( uniqueIdCount == 1) {                      segs.unshift('id("' + elm.getAttribute('id') + '")');                      return segs.join('/');                  } else {                      segs.unshift(elm.localName.toLowerCase() + '[@id="' + elm.getAttribute('id') + '"]');                  }          } else if (elm.hasAttribute('class')) {              segs.unshift(elm.localName.toLowerCase() + '[@class="' + elm.getAttribute('class') + '"]');          } else {              for (i = 1, sib = elm.previousSibling; sib; sib = sib.previousSibling) {                  if (sib.localName == elm.localName)  i++; };                  segs.unshift(elm.localName.toLowerCase() + '[' + i + ']');          };      };      return segs.length ? '/' + segs.join('/') : null;  };   function lookupElementByXPath(path) {      var evaluator = new XPathEvaluator();      var result = evaluator.evaluate(path, document.documentElement, null,XPathResult.FIRST_ORDERED_NODE_TYPE, null);      return  result.singleNodeValue;  }  

Answer 2

There's not a unique XPath to a node, so you'll have to decide what's the most appropriate way of constructing a path. Use IDs where available? Numeral position in the document? Position relative to other elements?

See getPathTo() in this answer for one possible approach.