[FIXED] Xpath expression pulling multiple items despite specifying item with [ ]

Issue

I am trying to write an XPath expression which can return the URL associated with the next page of a search.

The URL which leads to the next page of the search is always the href in the a tag following the tag span class="navCurrentPage" I have been trying to use a following-sibling term to pull the next URL. My search in the Chrome console is:

$x('//span[@class="navCurrentPage"][1]/following-sibling::a/@href[1]')

I thought by specifying @href[1] I would only get back one URL (thinking the [1] chooses the first element in list), but instead Chrome (and Scrapy) are returning four URLs. I don't understand why. Please help me to understand how to select the one URL that I am looking for.

Here is the URL where you can find the HTML giving me trouble:

https://www.yachtworld.com/core/listing/cache/searchResults.jsp?cit=true&slim=quick&ybw=&sm=3&searchtype=advancedsearch&Ntk=boatsEN&Ntt=&is=false&man=&hmid=102&ftid=101&enid=0&type=%28Sail%29&fromLength=35&toLength=50&fromYear=1985&toYear=2010&fromPrice=&toPrice=&luom=126&currencyid=100&city=&rid=100&rid=101&rid=104&rid=105&rid=107&rid=108&rid=112&rid=114&rid=115&rid=116&rid=128&rid=130&rid=153&pbsint=&boatsAddedSelected=-1

Thank you for the help.

Solution

Operator precedence: //x[1] means /descendant-or-self::node()/child::x[1] which finds every descendant x that is the first child of its parent. You want (//x)[1] which finds the first node among all the descendants named x.

Answered By - Michael Kay