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XPath Example

How to use XPath expressions to query XML documents with practical examples, including path selection, attribute filtering, and numeric predicates.

XPath Example

Consider the following XML document:

<?xml version="1.0"  encoding="UTF-8"?>

<bookstore>

	<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 Tips</title>
		<author>Tutorial Reference</author>
		<author>Tom Nolan</author>
		<author>Ryan Reynolds</author>
		<author>James Bond</author>
		<year>2022</year>
		<price>39.99</price>
	</book>

	<book category="web">
		<title lang="en">Learn XML</title>
		<author>Tutorial Reference</author>
		<year>2022</year>
		<price>9.99</price>
	</book>

</bookstore>

In the following table there are some path expressions:

Path Expression Result
/bookstore/book/title Selects all the title nodes.
/bookstore/book[1] Selects the first book element that is the child of the bookstore element.
/bookstore/book[1]/title Selects the title of the first book node under the bookstore element.
/bookstore/book[last()] Selects the last book element that is the child of the bookstore element
/bookstore/book[last()-1] Selects the last but one book element that is the child of the bookstore element
/bookstore/book[position()<3] Selects the first two book elements that are children of the bookstore element
//title[@lang] Selects all the title elements that have an attribute named lang
//title[@lang='en'] Selects all the title elements that have a "lang" attribute with a value of "en"
/bookstore/book[price>15.00] Selects all the book elements of the bookstore element that have a price element with a value greater than 15.00.
/bookstore/book[price>15.00]/title Selects all the title elements of the book elements of the bookstore element that have a price element with a value greater than 15.00.
/bookstore/book/price[text()] Selects the text from all the price nodes.
/bookstore/book[price>25]/price Selects all the price nodes with a price higher than 25.
/bookstore/book[price<15]/title Selects all the title nodes with a price lower than 15.
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