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XPath Examples

We will use the CD catalog from our XML tutorial to demonstrate some XPath examples.

The CD catalog

If you have studied our XML tutorial, you will remember this XML document:

(A fraction of the CD catalog)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<catalog>
  <cd>
    <title>Empire Burlesque</title>
    <artist>Bob Dylan</artist>
    <country>USA</country>
    <company>Columbia</company>
    <price>10.90</price>
    <year>1985</year>
  </cd>
  <cd>
    <title>Hide your heart</title>
    <artist>Bonnie Tyler</artist>
    <country>UK</country>
    <company>CBS Records</company>
    <price>9.90</price>
    <year>1988</year>
  </cd>
.
.
.
.
</catalog>   

If you have IE 5 or higher you can look at the cdcatalog.xml.

Selecting Nodes

We will demonstrate how to select nodes from the XML document by using the selectNodes function in Internet Explorer. This function takes a location path expression as an argument:

xmlobject.selectNodes(XPath expression)

Selecting cd Nodes

The following example selects all the cd nodes from the CD catalog:

xmlDoc.selectNodes("/catalog/cd") 

If you have IE 5 or higher you can try it yourself.

Selecting the First cd Node

The following example selects only the first cd node from the CD catalog:

xmlDoc.selectNodes("/catalog/cd[0]")

If you have IE 5 or higher you can try it yourself.

Note: IE 5 has implemented that [0] should be the first node, but according to the W3C standard it should have been [1].

Selecting price Nodes

The following example selects all the price nodes from the CD catalog:

xmlDoc.selectNodes("/catalog/cd/price") 

If you have IE 5 or higher you can try it yourself.

Selecting price Text Nodes

The following example selects only the text from the price nodes:

xmlDoc.selectNodes("/catalog/cd/price/text()") 

If you have IE 5 or higher you can try it yourself.

Selecting cd Nodes with Price>10.80

The following example selects all the cd nodes with a price>10.80:

xmlDoc.selectNodes("/catalog/cd[price>10.80]") 

If you have IE 5 or higher you can try it yourself.

Selecting price Nodes with Price>10.80

The following example selects all the price nodes with a price>10.80:

xmlDoc.selectNodes("/catalog/cd[price>10.80]/price") 

If you have IE 5 or higher you can try it yourself.

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