Is there relative CSS locator for Selenium?

Question

Suppose I'm looking for some div elements under #myPage element. My goal is to use CSS selectors and limit the search only to #myPage descendants.

Using Selenium XPath locators I can write something like this:

WebElement page = driver.findElement(new By.ById("myPage"));
....
List<WebElement> item = page.findElements(new By.ByXPath(".//div"));

However, trying to use CSS yields all divs in documents, not only descendants of #myPage:

WebElement page = driver.findElement(new By.ById("myPage"));
....
List<WebElement> item = page.findElements(new By.ByCssSelector("div"));

The big difference is the .// prefix that makes the XPath expression relative. I couldn't find similar property in CSS syntax, and I wonder if it's even possible.

P.S.
I know I can use #myPage > div expression, but then I couple the page lookup operation with the lookup of its descendants, which is not always desirable.

i would try this: driver.findElements(By.cssSelector("#myPage div")) anyway, your first operation is looking for the page with the certain ID. and second operation - is looking for the elements on the page ('div' descedants). "#myPage div" cssSelector seems to unite your operations — eugene.polschikov
– eugene.polschikov, Commented Oct 21, 2012 at 9:57
Thank you for your response but coupling these operations is not always wanted. — gamliela
– gamliela, Commented Oct 21, 2012 at 19:55

BoltClock · Accepted Answer · 2016-07-07 03:06:28Z

5

This functionality doesn't exist yet. There's a similar feature being proposed in Selectors API level 2 for DOM, and codified in Selectors level 4 as relative selectors, but I don't know if Selenium will ever implement such a feature.

If you must perform a relative lookup, XPath is your only option for now.

edited Jul 7, 2016 at 3:06

answered Oct 21, 2012 at 6:19

BoltClock

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