XPath Tester

XPath Examples

All of the following examples use this sample XML code. You can find more documentation on XPath expressions at W3Schools.com.

<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>

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)