Examples

(These examples are taken from http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath#path-abbrev)

para:

selects the para element children of the context node

*:

selects all element children of the context node

text():

selects all text node children of the context node

@name:

selects the name attribute of the context node

para[1]:

selects the first para child of the context node

*/para:

selects all para grandchildren of the context node

/doc/chapter[5]/section[2]:

selects the second section of the fifth chapter of the doc

chapter//para:

selects the para element descendants of the chapter element children of the context node

//para:

selects all the para descendants of the document root and thus selects all para elements in the same document as the context node

//olist/item:

selects all the item elements in the same document as the context node that have an olist parent

.:

selects the context node

.//para:

selects the para element descendants of the context node

..:

selects the parent of the context node

../@lang:

selects the lang attribute of the parent of the context node

para[@type="warning"]:

selects all para children of the context node that have a type attribute with value warning

The following examples are currently not supported

@*:

selects all the attributes of the context node

para[last()]:

selects the last para child of the context node

chapter[title="Introduction"]:

selects the chapter children of the context node that have one or more title children with string-value equal to Introduction

chapter[title]:

selects the chapter children of the context node that have one or more title children

para[@type="warning"][5]:

selects the fifth para child of the context node that has a type attribute with value warning

para[5][@type="warning"]:

selects the fifth para child of the context node if that child has a type attribute with value warning

employee[@secretary and @assistant]:

selects all the employee children of the context node that have both a secretary attribute and an assistant attribute

Grammar

location_path :=

slash? step ( slash step )*

slash ::=

'/'

| '//'

step :=

node_test ( '[' expr ']' )?

node_test :=

'.'

'..'

| '*'

| 'text()'

| name

expr :=

'@' name

| '@' name = '"' string '"'

| '@' name != '"' string '"'

| number