Tutorials References Exercises Videos Menu
Create Website Get Certified Upgrade
HTML CSS JAVASCRIPT SQL PYTHON JAVA PHP BOOTSTRAP HOW TO W3.CSS C C++ C# REACT R JQUERY DJANGO TYPESCRIPT NODEJS MYSQL

XML Tutorial

XML HOME XML Introduction XML How to use XML Tree XML Syntax XML Elements XML Attributes XML Namespaces XML Display XML HttpRequest XML Parser XML DOM XML XPath XML XSLT XML XQuery XML XLink XML Validator XML DTD XML Schema XML Server XML Examples XML Quiz XML Certificate

XML AJAX

AJAX Introduction AJAX XMLHttp AJAX Request AJAX Response AJAX XML File AJAX PHP AJAX ASP AJAX Database AJAX Applications AJAX Examples

XML DOM

DOM Introduction DOM Nodes DOM Accessing DOM Node Info DOM Node List DOM Traversing DOM Navigating DOM Get Values DOM Change Nodes DOM Remove Nodes DOM Replace Nodes DOM Create Nodes DOM Add Nodes DOM Clone Nodes DOM Examples

XPath Tutorial

XPath Introduction XPath Nodes XPath Syntax XPath Axes XPath Operators XPath Examples

XSLT Tutorial

XSLT Introduction XSL Languages XSLT Transform XSLT <template> XSLT <value-of> XSLT <for-each> XSLT <sort> XSLT <if> XSLT <choose> XSLT Apply XSLT on the Client XSLT on the Server XSLT Edit XML XSLT Examples

XQuery Tutorial

XQuery Introduction XQuery Example XQuery FLWOR XQuery HTML XQuery Terms XQuery Syntax XQuery Add XQuery Select XQuery Functions

XML DTD

DTD Introduction DTD Building Blocks DTD Elements DTD Attributes DTD Elements vs Attr DTD Entities DTD Examples

XSD Schema

XSD Introduction XSD How To XSD <schema> XSD Elements XSD Attributes XSD Restrictions XSD Complex Elements XSD Empty XSD Elements-only XSD Text-only XSD Mixed XSD Indicators XSD <any> XSD <anyAttribute> XSD Substitution XSD Example

XSD Data Types

XSD String XSD Date/Time XSD Numeric XSD Misc XSD Reference

Web Services

XML Services XML WSDL XML SOAP XML RDF XML RSS

References

DOM Node Types DOM Node DOM NodeList DOM NamedNodeMap DOM Document DOM Element DOM Attribute DOM Text DOM CDATA DOM Comment DOM XMLHttpRequest DOM Parser XSLT Elements XSLT/XPath Functions

XPath Syntax

❮ Previous Next ❯

XPath uses path expressions to select nodes or node-sets in an XML document. The node is selected by following a path or steps.

The XML Example Document

We will use the following XML document in the examples below.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<bookstore>

<book>
  <title lang="en">Harry Potter</title>
  <price>29.99</price>
</book>

<book>
  <title lang="en">Learning XML</title>
  <price>39.95</price>
</book>

</bookstore>

Selecting Nodes

XPath uses path expressions to select nodes in an XML document. The node is selected by following a path or steps. The most useful path expressions are listed below:

Expression Description
nodename Selects all nodes with the name "nodename"
/ Selects from the root node
// Selects nodes in the document from the current node that match the selection no matter where they are
. Selects the current node
.. Selects the parent of the current node
@ Selects attributes

In the table below we have listed some path expressions and the result of the expressions:

Path Expression Result
bookstore Selects all nodes with the name "bookstore"
/bookstore Selects the root element bookstore

Note: If the path starts with a slash ( / ) it always represents an absolute path to an element!
bookstore/book Selects all book elements that are children of bookstore
//book Selects all book elements no matter where they are in the document
bookstore//book Selects all book elements that are descendant of the bookstore element, no matter where they are under the bookstore element
//@lang Selects all attributes that are named lang

Predicates

Predicates are used to find a specific node or a node that contains a specific value.

Predicates are always embedded in square brackets.

In the table below we have listed some path expressions with predicates and the result of the expressions:

Path Expression Result
/bookstore/book[1] Selects the first book element that is the child of the bookstore element.

Note: In IE 5,6,7,8,9 first node is[0], but according to W3C, it is [1]. To solve this problem in IE, set the SelectionLanguage to XPath:

In JavaScript: xml.setProperty("SelectionLanguage","XPath");
/bookstore/book[last()] Selects the last book element that is the child of the bookstore element
/bookstore/book[last()-1] Selects the last but one book element that is the child of the bookstore element
/bookstore/book[position()<3] Selects the first two book elements that are children of the bookstore element
//title[@lang] Selects all the title elements that have an attribute named lang
//title[@lang='en'] Selects all the title elements that have a "lang" attribute with a value of "en"
/bookstore/book[price>35.00] Selects all the book elements of the bookstore element that have a price element with a value greater than 35.00
/bookstore/book[price>35.00]/title Selects all the title elements of the book elements of the bookstore element that have a price element with a value greater than 35.00

Selecting Unknown Nodes

XPath wildcards can be used to select unknown XML nodes.

Wildcard Description
* Matches any element node
@* Matches any attribute node
node() Matches any node of any kind

In the table below we have listed some path expressions and the result of the expressions:

Path Expression Result
/bookstore/* Selects all the child element nodes of the bookstore element
//* Selects all elements in the document
//title[@*] Selects all title elements which have at least one attribute of any kind

Selecting Several Paths

By using the | operator in an XPath expression you can select several paths.

In the table below we have listed some path expressions and the result of the expressions:

Path Expression Result
//book/title | //book/price Selects all the title AND price elements of all book elements
//title | //price Selects all the title AND price elements in the document
/bookstore/book/title | //price Selects all the title elements of the book element of the bookstore element AND all the price elements in the document

❮ Previous Next ❯