Select parent element of known element in Selenium

Question

I have a certain element that I can select with Selenium 1.

Unfortunately I need to click the parent element to get the desired behaviour. The element I can easily locate has attribute unselectable, making it dead for clicking. How do I navigate upwards with XPath?

Answer 1

There are a couple of options there. The sample code is in Java, but a port to other languages should be straightforward.

Java:

WebElement myElement = driver.findElement(By.id("myDiv"));
WebElement parent = (WebElement) ((JavascriptExecutor) driver).executeScript(
                                   "return arguments[0].parentNode;", myElement);

XPath:

WebElement myElement = driver.findElement(By.id("myDiv"));
WebElement parent = myElement.findElement(By.xpath("./.."));

Obtaining the driver from the WebElement

Note: As you can see, for the JavaScript version you'll need the driver. If you don't have direct access to it, you can retrieve it from the WebElement using:

WebDriver driver = ((WrapsDriver) myElement).getWrappedDriver();