Any of these XPath expressions will select the first a
element:
(//a)[1]
selects firsta
in the whole document.(/div/ul/li/figure/a)[1]
selects firsta
with shown heritage.(//div[@class="carousel"]/ul/li/figure/a)[1]
restricts heritage.(//div[@class="carousel"]//a)[1]
abstracts away some heritage.
Choose depending upon the context of your shown XML in your actual document and whether you wish to restrict the a
elements to only those under certain other elements.
Common Mistake
Note that //a[1]
actually selects multiple a
elements:
<a id="one"/>
<a id="two"/>
because //a[1]
means select the a
elements that are the first child of its parent.
You must use parentheses (//a)[1]
to select
<a id="two"/>
alone as the first a
in the document.