XPath TutorialLesson 46Free preview

XPath Introduction

This lesson is part of XML · All levels

Summary

XPath is an expression language for selecting the XML document portion based on a path pattern, e.g. /store/book[1]/title. Because selection is expressed in one expression, the search becomes much more concise than manual repetition. XPath became the basis of XSLT, XQuery, and many XML parser in different languages.

Key points

XPath specifies the path of selection for the document node
The absolute path begins with / and is relative to //
Predicate in square brackets filtered based on condition
The result of an expression is a node-set, string, number, or boolean
XPath is used for XSLT, XQuery, and DOM Level 3 XPath

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