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XPath Syntax

XPath uses path expressions to locate nodes within XML documents.

XML Example Document

We will use this simple XML document to describe the XPath syntax:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<catalog>
  <cd country="USA">
    <title>Empire Burlesque</title>
    <artist>Bob Dylan</artist>
    <price>10.90</price>
  </cd>
  <cd country="UK">
    <title>Hide your heart</title>
    <artist>Bonnie Tyler</artist>
    <price>9.90</price>
  </cd>
  <cd country="USA">
    <title>Greatest Hits</title> 
    <artist>Dolly Parton</artist> 
    <price>9.90</price> 
  </cd>
</catalog>

Locating Nodes

XML documents can be represented as a tree view of nodes (very similar to the tree view of folders you can see on your computer).

XPath uses a pattern expression to identify nodes in an XML document. An XPath pattern is a slash-separated list of child element names that describe a path through the XML document. The pattern "selects" elements that match the path.

The following XPath expression selects all the price elements of all the cd elements of the catalog element:

Note: If the path starts with a slash ( / ) it represents an absolute path to an element!

Note: If the path starts with two slashes ( // ) then all elements in the document that fulfill the criteria will be selected (even if they are at different levels in the XML tree)!

The following XPath expression selects all the cd elements in the document:

Selecting Unknown Elements

Wildcards ( * ) can be used to select unknown XML elements.

The following XPath expression selects all the child elements of all the cd elements of the catalog element:

The following XPath expression selects all the price elements that are grandchild elements of the catalog element:

The following XPath expression selects all price elements which have 2 ancestors:

The following XPath expression selects all elements in the document:

Selecting Branches

By using square brackets in an XPath expression you can specify an element further.

The following XPath expression selects the first cd child element of the catalog element:

The following XPath expression selects the last cd child element of the catalog element (Note: There is no function named first()):

The following XPath expression selects all the cd elements of the catalog element that have a price element:

The following XPath expression selects all the cd elements of the catalog element that have a price element with a value of 10.90:

The following XPath expression selects all the price elements of all the cd elements of the catalog element that have a price element with a value of 10.90:

Selecting Several Paths

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

The following XPath expression selects all the title and artist elements of the cd element of the catalog element:

The following XPath expression selects all the title and artist elements in the document:

The following XPath expression selects all the title, artist and price elements in the document:

The following XPath expression selects all the title elements of the cd element of the catalog element, and all the artist elements in the document:

Selecting Attributes

In XPath all attributes are specified by the @ prefix.

This XPath expression selects all attributes named country:

This XPath expression selects all cd elements which have an attribute named country:

This XPath expression selects all cd elements which have any attribute:

This XPath expression selects all cd elements which have an attribute named country with a value of 'UK':

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