XPath Examples

Let's try to learn some basic XPath syntax by looking at some examples.

The XML Example Document

We will use the following XML document in the examples below.

"books.xml":

<?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>

View the "books.xml" file in your browser.

Loading the XML Document

Using an XMLHttpRequest object to load XML documents is supported in all modern browsers.

var xmlhttp = new XMLHttpRequest();

Selecting Nodes

Unfortunately, there are different ways of dealing with XPath in different browsers.

Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera, and Safari use the evaluate() method to select nodes:

xmlDoc.evaluate( xpath, xmlDoc, null, XPathResult.ANY_TYPE,null);

Internet Explorer uses the selectNodes() method to select node:

/bookstore/book[price>35]/title

Try it Yourself »

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