Question

I want to retrieve the DOM path of a random element in a website (like Firebug or this Greasemonkey userscript ) when I click on this element. No problem for this part, I return a string containing the path.

The only drawback being I don’t need a full path such as

html > body > div #mainPanel > table #pageBody > tbody > tr > td 

Just this : #pageBody > tbody > tr > td would be enough to retrieve the element using jQuery or Dojo.

I thought of using a Regexp to remove all that’s before the last id, this should not be an issue.

As for class, I’m not sure I can do the same, because it could be useful to see if other elements match the pattern. For example, in my site .DiscreetList > li matches 6 nodes. How can I retrieve the good one?

Are there other possibilities for shortening besides the class and id trick? (for use in jQuery/Dojo or equivalent)

Edit : After the remarks, I found this snippet (© Greg’s code)

Now, the problem with index is fixed, and I decided, based on the comments, to shorten by the id, safe way to go 🙂

Thanks for your answers.

Answer 1

In order to accurately locate the element, you would need to also store the index of the element (within it’s parent). Otherwise, as Pointy mentioned, even #pageBody > tbody > tr > td would match all td‘s inside of the tr.