XPath 1.0 Tutorial

language for addressing parts of XML documents in XSLT 1.0 providing as well basic facilities for manipulation of strings, numbers and booleans

XPath is described in XPath 1.0 standard. In this tutorial selected XPath features are demonstrated on many examples.

Standard excerpt:
XPath is the result of an effort to provide a common syntax and semantics for functionality shared between XSL Transformations and XPointer. The primary purpose of XPath is to address parts of an XML document. In support of this primary purpose, it also provides basic facilities for manipulation of strings, numbers and booleans. XPath uses a compact, non-XML syntax to facilitate use of XPath within URIs and XML attribute values. XPath operates on the abstract, logical structure of an XML document, rather than its surface syntax. XPath gets its name from its use of a path notation as in URLs for navigating through the hierarchical structure of an XML document.

List of XPaths

• XPath as filesystem addressing
• Start with //
• All elements: *
• Further conditions inside []
• Attributes
• Attribute values
• Nodes counting
• Playing with names of selected elements
• Length of string
• Combining XPaths with |
• Child axis
• Descendant axis
• Parent axis
• Ancestor axis
• Following-sibling axis
• Preceding-sibling axis
• Following axis
• Preceding axis
• Descendant-or-self axis
• Ancestor-or-self axis
• Orthogonal axes
• Numeric operations