Get element's CSS selector (when it doesn't have an id)

function fullPath(el){
  var names = [];
  while (el.parentNode){
    if (el.id){
      names.unshift('#'+el.id);
      break;
    }else{
      if (el==el.ownerDocument.documentElement) names.unshift(el.tagName);
      else{
        for (var c=1,e=el;e.previousElementSibling;e=e.previousElementSibling,c++);
        names.unshift(el.tagName+":nth-child("+c+")");
      }
      el=el.parentNode;
    }
  }
  return names.join(" > ");
}

console.log(  fullPath( $('input')[0] ) );
// "#search > DIV:nth-child(1) > INPUT:nth-child(1)"

This seems to be what you are asking for, but you may realize that this is not guaranteed to uniquely identify only one element. (For the above example, all the sibling inputs would be matched as well.)

Edit: Changed code to use nth-child instead of CSS classes to properly disambiguate for a single child.

Use FireFox with FireBug installed.

• Right-click any element
• Select "Inspect Element"
• Right click the element in the HTML tree
• Select "Copy XPath" or "Copy CSS Path"

Output for the permalink to this answer (XPath):

/html/body/div[4]/div[2]/div[2]/div[2]/div[3]/table/tbody/tr/td[2]/table/tbody/tr/td/div/a

CSS Path:

html body.question-page div.container div#content div#mainbar div#answers div#answer-4588287.answer table tbody tr td table.fw tbody tr td.vt div.post-menu a

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But regarding this comment:

my final intent is to create a css selector for the object ...

If that is your intent, there may be an easier way through JavaScript:

var uniquePrefix = 'isThisUniqueEnough_';
var counterIndex = 0;
function addCssToElement(elem, cssText){
    var domId;
    if(elem.id)domId=elem.id;
    else{
        domId = uniquePrefix + (++counterIndex);
        elem.id = domId;
    }
    document.styleSheets[0].insertRule("#"+domId+"{"+cssText+"}");
}

The last line may need to be implemented differently for different browsers. Did not test.

I found I could actually use this code from chrome devtools source to solve this, without that many modifications.

After adding relevant methods from WebInspector.DOMPresentationUtils to new namespace, and fixing some differences, I simply call it like so:

> UTILS.cssPath(node)

For implementation example see css_path.js