Issue
I am making a chrome extension that deletes a section of a website. To do this, I need to find a <span> that contains some text, and then select the containing <div> tag. Often this tag will be many levels above the span in the DOM, and it doesn't have a consistent attribute to select by.
HTML
<body>
<div> <!-- I want to select this DIV -->
<div>
<div>
<div>
<span>some text</span>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</body>
I have used //span[text() = 'some text' to find the right <span> but now I need to go back up to the first <div> in the example HTML
Have tried //*[ancestor::span[text() = 'some text']] and //span[ancestor::*[text() = 'some text']]. Yes these would only go up to the first parent, but that's not even working for me, even though they come up as valid XPath expressions when I test on XPath Tester.
What is the simplest way of writing an XPath expression that can do this?
Solution
A better solution I have found is to use ancestor in the XPath query, because I am often wanting to traverse up many levels.
Examples
//span[text() = 'some text']/ancestor::*[4]
selects the fourth element up from the selected span, regardless of what type those elements might be.
//span[text() = 'some text']/ancestor::a[2]
Will find the second anchor tag up from the selected span, provided it is a direct ascendant of the span.
Answered By - Mr. J
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