Question

I have an XPath selector. How can I get the elements matching that selector using jQuery?

I’ve seen https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Introduction_to_using_XPath_in_JavaScript but it doesn’t use jQuery, and it seems a little too verbose, and I suppose it’s not cross-browser.

Also, this http://jsfiddle.net/CJRmk/ doesn’t seem to work.

alert($("//a").length);

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.6.0/jquery.min.js"></script>
<a href="a1.php"></a>
<a href="a2.php"></a>

Answer 1

document.evaluate() (DOM Level 3 XPath) is supported in Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera – the only major browser missing is MSIE. Nevertheless, jQuery supports basic XPath expressions: http://docs.jquery.com/DOM/Traversing/Selectors#XPath_Selectors (moved into a plugin in the current jQuery version, see https://plugins.jquery.com/xpath/). It simply converts XPath expressions into equivalent CSS selectors however.