How to use css selector nth-of-type and nth-child to locate element in Python Selenium

Question

Below is a snippet of how a page is set up.

<class id="class1">
  <ul>
    <li>
      <strong>section 1</strong>
      <a href="link.com/home1">some link 1</a>
    <li>
      <strong>section 2</strong>
      <a href="link.com/home">some link 2</a>
<class id="class1">
  <ul>
    <li>
      <strong>section 3</strong>
      <a href="link.com/home/abc">some link 3</a>
    <li>
      <strong>section 4</strong>
      <a href="link.com/home/def">some link 4</a>

how do i locate link.com/home in section 2?

I figured this would work:

.class1:nth-of-type(1) li:nth-child(2) [href*="/home"]

But it doesn't. It finds the link in section 4 as well. I have to use *= because in different environments the url prefix changes.

Answer 1

For completeness, I have added the </li>, </ul> and </class> tags at the appropriate places and the ideal HTML will be:

<class id="class1">
  <ul>
    <li>
      <strong>section 1</strong>
      <a href="link.com/home1">some link 1</a>
    </li>
    <li>
      <strong>section 2</strong>
      <a href="link.com/home">some link 2</a>
    </li>
  </ul>
</class>
<class id="class1">
  <ul>
    <li>
      <strong>section 3</strong>
      <a href="link.com/home/abc">some link 3</a>
    </li>
    <li>
      <strong>section 4</strong>
      <a href="link.com/home/def">some link 4</a>
    </li>
  </ul>
</class>

To locate the href attribute of section 2 you can use either of the following Locator Strategies:

• Using nth-child():

  class#class1 > ul li:nth-child(2) a[href$="home"]
  

• Using nth-child():

  class#class1 > ul li:nth-of-type(2) a[href$="home"]
  

---

Solution

To print the value of the href attribute you can use either of the following Locator Strategies:

• Using nth-child():

  print(driver.find_element(By.CSS_SELECTOR, "class#class1 > ul li:nth-child(2) a[href$='home']").get_attribute("href"))
  

• Using nth-child():

  print(driver.find_element(By.CSS_SELECTOR, "class#class1 > ul li:nth-of-type(2) a[href$='home']").get_attribute("href"))
  

---

tl; dr

What is the difference between p:nth-child(2) and p:nth-of-type(2)?