Get CSS path from Dom element

The answer above actually has a bug in it — the while loop breaks prematurely when it encounters a non-element node (e.g. a text node) resulting in an incorrect CSS selector.

Here’s an improved version that fixes that problem plus:

  • Stops when it encounters the first ancestor element with an id assigned to it
  • Uses nth-of-type() to make the selectors more readable
    var cssPath = function(el) {
        if (!(el instanceof Element)) 
            return;
        var path = [];
        while (el.nodeType === Node.ELEMENT_NODE) {
            var selector = el.nodeName.toLowerCase();
            if (el.id) {
                selector += '#' + el.id;
                path.unshift(selector);
                break;
            } else {
                var sib = el, nth = 1;
                while (sib = sib.previousElementSibling) {
                    if (sib.nodeName.toLowerCase() == selector)
                       nth++;
                }
                if (nth != 1)
                    selector += ":nth-of-type("+nth+")";
            }
            path.unshift(selector);
            el = el.parentNode;
        }
        return path.join(" > ");
     }

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