Get the full path of a node, after get it with an XPath query in JavaScript

Question

Hi, i have the next instruction, in JavaScript:

var firstScene = document.evaluate('//Scene', document, null, XPathResult.FIRST_ORDERED_NODE_TYPE, null);

so my question is how to get the full path of the node firstscene?

Answer 1

Using this getXPath() function:

  function getXPath(node, path) {
    path = path || [];
    if(node.parentNode) {
      path = getXPath(node.parentNode, path);
    }

    if(node.previousSibling) {
      var count = 1;
      var sibling = node.previousSibling
      do {
        if(sibling.nodeType == 1 && sibling.nodeName == node.nodeName) {count++;}
        sibling = sibling.previousSibling;
      } while(sibling);
      if(count == 1) {count = null;}
    } else if(node.nextSibling) {
      var sibling = node.nextSibling;
      do {
        if(sibling.nodeType == 1 && sibling.nodeName == node.nodeName) {
          var count = 1;
          sibling = null;
        } else {
          var count = null;
          sibling = sibling.previousSibling;
        }
      } while(sibling);
    }

    if(node.nodeType == 1) {
      path.push(node.nodeName.toLowerCase() + (node.id ? "[@id='"+node.id+"']" : count > 0 ? "["+count+"]" : ''));
    }
    return path;
  };

pass the DOM ojbect obtained from firstScene.iterateNext() to the getXPath() method and it will return an array with all of the XPATH steps.

You can then use the array join() method to return a full XPATH expression:

getXPath(firstScene.iterateNext()).join("/");