XPATH

The XPath language provides a simple, concise syntax for selectingnodes from an XML document. XPath also provides rules for converting anode in an XML document object model (DOM) tree to a boolean, double,or string value. XPath is a W3C-defined language and an official W3Crecommendation; the W3C hosts the XML Path Language (XPath) Version1.0 specification.

XPath Context

XPath location paths may be relative to a particular node in thedocument, known as the context. Consider the followingXML document:

<widgets>
<widget>
<manufacturer/>
<dimensions/>
</widget>
</widgets>

The <widget> element can be selected with thefollowing XPath API code:

// parse the XML as a W3C Document
DocumentBuilder builder = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance().newDocumentBuilder();
Document document = builder.parse(new File("/widgets.xml"));

XPath xpath = XPathFactory.newInstance().newXPath();
String expression = "/widgets/widget";
Node widgetNode = (Node) xpath.evaluate(expression, document, XPathConstants.NODE);

With a reference to the <widget> element, arelative XPath expression can now written to select the<manufacturer> child element:

XPath xpath = XPathFactory.newInstance().newXPath();
String expression = "manufacturer";
Node manufacturerNode = (Node) xpath.evaluate(expression, widgetNode, XPathConstants.NODE);