Question

When it comes to indexing in XPath, I feel like I’m missing something here.

If I have two table tags in an HTML document, and within the Chrome console I type

$x("//table[1]");

, I expect to get the first table tag on the page.

Instead, I get a list containing both table tags. I suspected it might have something to do with using

//

but using an absolute XPath expression yielded the same results.

I think this is a pretty simple misunderstanding, but I’m not seeing it when reading the docs.

Answer 1

//table[1] returns all tables that are the first table child of their respective parents.

To get the first table use /descendant::table[1] or in XPath 2.0 (//table)[1].

Here it is in the standard:

The path expression //para[1] does not mean the same as the path expression /descendant::para[1]. The latter selects the first descendant para element; the former selects all descendant para elements that are the first para children of their respective parents.