XPath

For more information on the XPath syntax , head over to the official W3C specification .

You can also find an online XPath evaluator here .

Note that XPath expressions have a directory-path-like syntax.

Here are a few tips to help you work with XML payloads:

• A single / selects from the root node.

• /list identifies the "list object" at the top level of the XML document. Then you can iterate over attributes and sub attributes. The language natively supports arrays.

• The slash sign / allows you to get attributes of an object or to go deeper in the tree.

• The square brackets [] enable to select a specific item in an array by its position. Please note that the index starts from 1.

• /text() allows you to get a node inner text.

• // selects nodes in the document from the current node that match the selection no matter where they are.

Sample XPath expressions

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<bookstore>
  <book category="cooking">
    <title lang="en">Everyday Italian</title>
    <author>Giada De Laurentiis</author>
    <year>2005</year>
    <price>30.00</price>
  </book>

  <book category="children">
    <title lang="en">Harry Potter</title>
    <author>J K. Rowling</author>
    <year>2005</year>
    <price>29.99</price>
  </book>

  <book category="web">
    <title lang="en">XQuery Kick Start</title>
    <author>James McGovern</author>
    <author>Per Bothner</author>
    <author>Kurt Cagle</author>
    <author>James Linn</author>
    <author>Vaidyanathan Nagarajan</author>
    <year>2003</year>
    <price>49.99</price>
  </book>

  <book category="web">
    <title lang="en">Learning XML</title>
    <author>Erik T. Ray</author>
    <year>2003</year>
    <price>39.95</price>
  </book>
</bookstore>

Here are some sample expressions and their result.

Expression	Value
/	The whole document node
/bookstore	The "bookstore" node
/bookstore/book/title	An array of all "title" nodes of all book nodes under the bookstore element
//title	An array of all "title" nodes whatever their position is
//title/@lang	An array of all lang attributes of the "title" nodes
/bookstore/book/title/text()	An array of all text values of "title" nodes of all "book" nodes under the bookstore element
/bookstore/book[price>35]/title	The "title" nodes of all "book" nodes having price greater than 35
//book[last()]/title	The "title" node of the last "book" node
//book[position() < 3]	The two first "book" nodes
//title[@lang]]	An array of all "title" nodes with an attribute "lang"
name(//*[1])	The name of the first element in the document (i.e.: bookstore)
count(//title)	The number of all "title" nodes (i.e.: 4)