XPath

For more information on the XPath syntax, see the official W3C specification. You can also find an online XPath evaluator on the Free Formatter website. 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.