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How to Use XPath Wildcard

How XPath wildcards (*, @*, node(), .) work to select unknown or varying XML nodes, attributes, or any node type for flexible path expressions.

When writing XPath expressions, you don't always know or need to specify the exact name of the nodes you want to select. Wildcards provide a powerful way to write more flexible and robust path expressions that can select unknown or varying XML nodes.

XPath Wildcard List

XPath defines the following wildcards on nodes to be used with the XPath expressions.

Wildcard Expression
* to match any element node.
. to match the current node in context.
@* to match any attribute node.
node() to match node of any type.

Example

Consider the following XML document:

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

<bookstore>
    <book>
        <title lang="en">A Great Book</title>
        <author>Tom Nolan</author>
        <price>19.99</price>
    </book>

    <book>
        <title lang="en">Learning XML</title>
        <author>Tutorial Reference</author>
        <price>29.99</price>
    </book>
</bookstore>

In the following table there are some examples of selection:

Example Result
//* Matches ALL nodes in the input XML document
/bookstore/* Matches all child nodes of bookstore. In this example the only child nodes are book.
/*/category Matches all book nodes as children of the root node (bookstore). If there are nodes other than book under the bookstore node then this expression will only return the required book nodes.
attribute::* Selects all attributes of the current node
//*[@*] Matches ANY element node which has an attribute defined. This example will only match title nodes.
//title[@*] Matches only title element nodes with an attribute defined.
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