How to get all the previous sibling elements in Selenium Python?

Selenium Python – Get all the previous sibling elements

In this tutorial, you will learn how to get all the previous sibling elements of a given element, in Selenium Python.

To get all the previous sibling elements of a given element in Selenium Python, call the find_elements() method on the given element and pass By.XPATH for by parameter, and 'previous-sibling::* for the value parameter in the function call.

previous-sibling::* represents all the previous sibling elements for a given element. But it also contains the calling web element. Therefore, we can use Python Slicing technique to remove the first element.

If myelement is the WebElement object for which we would like to find all the previous sibling elements, the code snippet for find_elements() method is

myelement.find_elements(By.XPATH, "following-sibling::*)

The above method call returns a list of WebElement objects containing the sibling elements previous to the given element.

Example

In this example, we shall use the following HTML file, index.html, that contains a parent div with three children divs.

index.html

<html>
 <body>
  <h1>Hello Family</h1>
  <div id="parent">
    <div id="child1">This is child 1.</div>
    <div id="child2">This is child 2.</div>
    <div id="child3">This is child 3.</div>
    <div id="child4">This is child 4.</div>
  </div>
 </body>
</html>
Selenium Python - Get all the previous sibling elements

We shall take the child div div#child3 as our WebElement of interest, find all of its previous sibling elements, and print them to standard output.

Python Program

from selenium import webdriver
from webdriver_manager.chrome import ChromeDriverManager
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.service import Service as ChromeService
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By

# Setup chrome driver
service = ChromeService(executable_path=ChromeDriverManager().install())
driver = webdriver.Chrome(service=service)
driver.set_window_size(500, 400)

# Navigate to the url
driver.get('http://127.0.0.1:5500/index.html')

# Get the div element you are interested in
mydiv = driver.find_element(By.ID, 'child3')

# Get all previous siblings of mydiv
previous_siblings = mydiv.find_elements(By.XPATH, "preceding-sibling::*")

# Print the previous siblings
for sibling in previous_siblings:
    print("\nPrevious Sibling")
    print(sibling.get_attribute('outerHTML'))

# Close the driver
driver.quit()

Output

Previous Sibling
<div id="child1">This is child 1.</div>

Previous Sibling
<div id="child2">This is child 2.</div>

#child3 has two previous siblings namely, #child1 and #child2.

Summary

In this Python Selenium tutorial, we have given instructions on how to find all the previous sibling elements of a given web element, with the help of an example program.

Quiz on Selenium

Q1. Which of the following is not a popular web driver used in Selenium Python?

Not answered

Q2. What is the method used to interact with web elements in Selenium Python?

Not answered

Q3. Which of the following is not a commonly used web element locator in Selenium Python?

Not answered

Q4. What is the method used to select a value from a drop-down list in Selenium Python?

Not answered

Q5. What is the method used to clear the text from an input field in Selenium Python?

Not answered