Question

preceding-sibling in xpath Selenium

Answer 1

Here, ul has 8 children(8-li) on total.

 And, each li has 7 more siblings(i.e brothers/sisters). Now, suppose you want to identify the 1^th li and also 2^nd li where only third li can be identified uniquely.

Identifying the 3^nd li element, via the xpath

//li[@class='dropdown forum_blog hidden-xs']

NOW,

if we want the identify the 1^th li then how do we proceed???

Here we can make use of the preceding-sibling to

 identify the 1^st  element by

//li[@class='dropdown forum_blog hidden-xs']/preceding-sibling::li[2]

Where as the 2^nd element can be identified as

//li[@class='dropdown forum_blog hidden-xs']/preceding-sibling::li[1]

Note: preceding-sibling::[1]  and preceding-sibling::[2] work in descending order.