The below codes explains how to use xpath ancestor in your selenium code.
I wrote code snippet here in java programming language.
import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;
public class SeleniumAncestorEx2 {
public static void main(String[] args) {
WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();
driver.get("file:///D:\\ancestor.html");
WebElement element = driver.findElement(By
.xpath("//div[@id='div4']"));
String id=element.getAttribute("id");
System.out.println("required element id" + id);
element = element.findElement(By.xpath("./ancestor::div[1]"));
System.out.println("above one level the parent element id of id \""+id +"\" is :"+element.getAttribute("id"));
id=element.getAttribute("id");
element = element.findElement(By.xpath("./ancestor::div[1]"));
System.out.println("above one level the parent element id of id \""+id +"\" is :"+element.getAttribute("id"));
id=element.getAttribute("id");
element = element.findElement(By.xpath("./ancestor::div[1]"));
System.out.println("above one level the parent element id of id \""+id +"\" is :"+element.getAttribute("id"));
element = driver.findElement(By.xpath("//div[@id='div4']"));
id=element.getAttribute("id");
element = element.findElement(By.xpath("./ancestor::div[3]"));
System.out.println("outer most parent div element id of id \""+id +"\" is :"+element.getAttribute("id"));
}
}
<html>
<body>
<div id="div1">
<div id="div2">
<div id="div3">
<table>
<tr>
<td>
<div id="div4">Ancestor Check</div>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>
you can save the above html content as ancestor.html and refer that in above java code.
Output:
above one level the parent element id of id "div4" is :div3
above one level the parent element id of id "div3" is :div2
above one level the parent element id of id "div2" is :div1
outer most parent div element id of id "div4" is :div1
You can also refer basic example of ancestor in below link
http://softwares-list.blogspot.in/2013/08/selenium-xpath-ancestor-example.html
