List of all XPath selectors

XPath selectors can be used to select elements in HTML or XML. They are mostly used in parsing any API data or scraping a web page. Here’s a list of most used XPath selectors.

All of the following examples use this sample XML code. Credits to Freeformatter.com for putting it all together.

<root xmlns:foo="http://www.foo.org/" xmlns:bar="http://www.bar.org">
	<actors>
		<actor id="1">Christian Bale</actor>
		<actor id="2">Liam Neeson</actor>
		<actor id="3">Michael Caine</actor>
	</actors>
	<foo:singers>
		<foo:singer id="4">Tom Waits</foo:singer>
		<foo:singer id="5">B.B. King</foo:singer>
		<foo:singer id="6">Ray Charles</foo:singer>
	</foo:singers>
</root>

Test these selectors using XPath tester

1. Select the document node

/


2. Select the ‘root’ element

/root


3. Select all ‘actor’ elements that are direct children of the ‘actors’ element.

/root/actors/actor


4. Select all ‘singer’ elements regardless of their positions in the document.

//foo:singer


5. Select the ‘id’ attributes of the ‘singer’ elements regardless of their positions in the document.

//foo:singer/@id


6. Select the textual value of first ‘actor’ element.

//actor[1]/text()


7. Select the last ‘actor’ element.

//actor[last()]


8. Select the first and second ‘actor’ elements using their position.

//actor[position() < 3]


9. Select all ‘actor’ elements that have an ‘id’ attribute.

//actor[@id]


10. Select the ‘actor’ element with the ‘id’ attribute value of ‘3’.

//actor[@id=’3′]


11. Select all ‘actor’ nodes with the ‘id’ attribute value lower or equal to ‘3’.

//actor[@id<=3]


12. Select all the children of the ‘singers’ node.

/root/foo:singers/*


13. Select all the elements in the document.

//*


14. Select all the ‘actor’ elements AND the ‘singer’ elements.

//actor|//foo:singer


15. Select the name of the first element in the document.

name(//*[1])


16. Select the numeric value of the ‘id’ attribute of the first ‘actor’ element.

number(//actor[1]/@id)


17. Select the string representation value of the ‘id’ attribute of the first ‘actor’ element.

string(//actor[1]/@id)


18. Select the length of the first ‘actor’ element’s textual value.

string-length(//actor[1]/text())


19. Select the local name of the first ‘singer’ element, i.e. without the namespace.

local-name(//foo:singer[1])


20. Select the number of ‘singer’ elements.

count(//foo:singer)


21. Select the sum of the ‘id’ attributes of the ‘singer’ elements.

sum(//foo:singer/@id)


Ranjith kumar
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