Different results selecting HTML elements with XPath in Firefox and Internet Explorer

Question

I\'m trying to select a specific HTML element in a document, for firefox i just use:

xpathobj = document.evaluate(xpath, document, null,
               XPath         


        

Answer 1

Hi well in the end i came up with my own dodgy solution, any sugestions on improving it would be greatly apreciated. It makes use of some prototype functionality:

Works in IE5+ with xpath of the form "/HTML/BODY/DIV[9]/DIV[2]"

function getXPathElement (xpath , element) {

//Specific to project, here i know that the body element will always have the id "top"
//but otherwise the element that is passed in should be first element in the xpath 
//statement eg. /HTML/BODY/DIV the element passed in should be HTML
if(!element){
    element = $("top");
    var xpathArrayIndex = 3;
} else {
    var xpathArrayIndex = 1;
}
//split the xpath statement up
var xpathArray = xpath.split("/");

var carryOn = true; 
while(carryOn){
    decendents = element.childElements();
    //check to see if we are at the end of the xpath statement
    if(xpathArrayIndex == xpathArray.length){
        return element;
    }
    //if there is only one decendent make it the next element
    if(decendents.size() == 1) {
        element = decendents.first();
    } else {
    //otherwise search the decendents for the next element
        element = getXPathElementByIndex(decendents, xpathArray[xpathArrayIndex]);
    }
    xpathArrayIndex++;
}

}

function getXPathElementByIndex(decendents, xpathSegment){

var decendentsArray = decendents.toArray();
//seperate the index from the element name
var temp = xpathSegment.split("[");
var elementName = temp[0];
//get the index as a number eg. "9]" to 9
var elementIndex = +temp[1].replace("]", "");
//the number of matching elements
var count = 0;

//keeps track of the number of iterations
var i = 0;
while(count != elementIndex) {
    //if the decendent's name matches the xpath element name increment the count
    if(decendentsArray[i].nodeName == elementName){
        count++;
    }
    i++;
}
var element = decendentsArray[i - 1];
return element;

}

Thanks to everyone for thier help, either way i learnt a fair bit about various javascript frameworks.