DOM and XPATH

DOM

• Originally developed for HTML. Supported by most browsers.

• Represents the content of the XML or HTML document as a tree structure.

• Using DOM, we can easily read and update the contents of the document.

D: Document —> file

O: Object —> tags elements

M: Model —> layout structure

Online DOM viewer:

Live DOM Viewer

XPATH

• Allows us to use path expressions to navigate an XML document.

• It allow us to select only the nodes we're interested in.

its :

• Expression language.

• Contains some standard functions.

• Non-XML

XPATH works on the following kinds of nodes:

Expression	Description
nodename	Selects all nodes with the name"nodename"
/	Selects from the root node
//	Selects nodes in the document from the current node that match the selection no matter where they are
.	Selects the value of the current node
..	Selects the parent of the current node
@	Selects attributes

Predicates

• similar to filters

• They always appear in[]

• They appear after the axis and node text

Path Expression	Result
/bookstore/book[1]	Selects the first book element that is the child of 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>35.00]	Selects all the book elements of the bookstore element that have a price element
/bookstore/book[price>35.00]/title	Selects all the title elements of the book elements of the bookstore element that have a price element with a value greater than 35.00

XPATH Axes

an Axes represents a relationship to the current node on the tree.

AxisName	Result
ancestor	Selects all ancestors (parent, grandparent, etc.) of the current node
ancestor-or-self	Selects all ancestors (parent, grandparent, etc.) of the current node and the current node itself
attribute	Selects all attributes of the current node
child	Selects all children of the current node
descendant	Selects all descendants (children, grandchildren, etc.) of the current node
descendant-or-self	Selects all descendants (children, grandchildren, etc.) of the current node and the current node itself
following	Selects everything in the document after the closing tag of the current node
following-sibling	Selects all siblings after the current node
namespace	Selects all namespace nodes of the current node
parent	Selects the parent of the current node
preceding	Selects all nodes that appear before the current node in the document, except ancestors, attribute nodes and namespace nodes
preceding-sibling	Selects all siblings before the current node
self	Selects the current node