1. XPath XML Path Language

2. Outline XML Path Language (XPath) Data Model Description Node values XPath expressions Relative expressions Simple subset of XPath Predicates Node-Set Functions Full location Steps Axes Node Tests Abbreviated syntax Links to more information

3. XML Path Language (XPath) XPath 1.0 is a W3C Recommendation (16 November 1999) used for addressing elements (in XPointer) used for matching elements (in XSLT and XQuery) declarative language for specifying paths in trees syntax somewhat similar to that used for paths in file hierarchies

4. Data Model - example document document is viewed as a tree of nodes e.g. document The First Chapter...... The Second Chapter......

5. Data Model - example document

6. Data Model Description 6 types of node: root, element, attribute, text, comment, processing instruction root of tree is different from (and parent of) root element of the document (Book in example) in example root node is red element nodes are yellow text nodes are green element nodes have associated set of attribute nodes attribute nodes are not children of element nodes order of child element nodes is significant

7. Data Model - example document More complex document <CD publisher="Deutsche Grammophon" length="PT1H13M37S" > Johannes Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 Emil Gilels Berlin Philharmonic Eugen Jochum Fantasias Op. 116 Emil Gilels

8. Data Model - example document

9. Node values each attribute and element node has a value e.g., value of length attribute node is PT1H13M37S value of an element node is concatenation of all text node descendants e.g., value of composer element node is Johannes Brahms e.g., value of second performance element node is Fantasias Op. 116 Emil Gilels e.g., value of CD element node is Johannes BrahmsPiano Concerto No. 2 Emil GilelsBerlin Philharmonic Eugen JochumFantasias Op. 116 Emil Gilels note : attribute values are not included

10. XPath expressions an XPath expression is either an absolute expression or a relative expression an absolute expression starts with '/' is followed by a relative expression and is evaluated starting at the root node a relative expression is a sequence of location steps each separated by '/' example (absolute expression comprising 2 steps): /CD/composer

11. Relative expressions relative expression is evaluated with respect to an initial context (set of nodes) initial context is defined externally (by XPointer or XSLT) context for composer given by CD each location step is evaluated with respect to some context produces a set of nodes which provides the context for the next location step

12. Simple subset of XPath subset uses abbreviated syntax a location step has one of 3 forms: it is empty, i.e., // element-name predicates @attribute-name predicates an empty step means search all descendants of the context node element-name means find all child elements of the context node which have the given name @attribute-name means find the attribute node of the context node which has the given name optional predicates (each enclosed in [ and ]) filter nodes found further

13. Examples – cd.xml Johannes Brahms Emil Gilels Berlin Philharmonic Eugen Jochum 1972 Piano Concerto No. 1 Deutsche Grammophon 419159-2 Martha Argerich London Symphony Orchestra Claudio Abbado 1968 Frederic Chopin Piano Concerto No. 1 Franz Liszt Piano Concerto No. 1 Antal Dorati 1984 Deutsche Grammophon 449719-2

14. Examples – cd.xml /CDlist/CD all child CD elements of the CDlist element that is the child of the root //composer all composer elements that are descendants of the root //performance/composer all composer child elements of performance elements which are descendants of the root //performance[composer] all performance elements that have a composer element as a child //CD[performance/date] all CD elements that have a performance element as a child that has a date element as a child //performance[conductor][date] all performance elements that have both conductor and date elements as children

15. Predicates predicates filter out more nodes from a node-set S evaluate predicate on each node x in node-set S with x as the context node the size of S as the context size the position of x in S as the context position predicate comprises Boolean expressions: using and, or, not, =,... numerical expressions: using +, -,... node-set expressions: location paths filtered by predicates node-set functions

16. Node-Set Functions last(): returns context size position(): returns context position count(S): returns number of nodes in S name(S): returns name of first node in S id(S): returns nodes who have an ID- type attribute with a value in S e.g. position()=2: true if node is 2nd in the context position()=last(): true if node is last in the context

17. Examples count(//performance): the number of performance elements //performance[not(date)]: performance elements that do not have a date element as a child all CD elements that have "Deutsche Grammophon" as publisher and have more than 1 performance element as child: //CD [publisher="Deutsche Grammophon" and count(performance) > 1] or //CD [publisher="Deutsche Grammophon"] [count(performance) > 1] or //CD [count(performance) > 1] [publisher="Deutsche Grammophon"]

18. More examples //CD/performance[position()=2] returns the second performance of each CD //CD/performance[position()=2][d ate] returns the second performance of each CD if it has a date (otherwise, returns nothing) //CD/performance[date and position()=2] returns the same //CD/performance[date][position() =2] returns the second of those performance children of each CD that have a date (if any)

19. Full location Steps using full, not abbreviated, syntax a location step has the form axis :: node-test predicates where axis selects a set of candidate nodes node-test filters candidates based on node type or name optional predicates in child::CD[attribute::publisher="Deut sche Grammophon"] child and attribute are axes CD and publisher are node-tests

20. Axes axis specifies what nodes, relative to context node(s), to consider there are 13 axes defined self: the context node itself parent: the parent of the context node (note: parent of root is empty) attribute: all attributes of the context node namespace: all namespace nodes of the context node child, ancestor, descendant (see later) ancestor-or-self: ancestors and the context node descendant-or-self: descendants and the context node preceding-sibling, following-sibling, preceding, following (see later)

21. Axes: parent, child,... context node (and self axis) in yellow nodes in parent axis in black white nodes in child axis in white nodes in preceding-sibling axis in green nodes in following-sibling red

22. Axes: ancestor, descendant,... context node C (and self axis) in yellow ancestor (black): elements whose start tag precedes start tag of C and whose end tag follows end tag of C descendant (white): elements whose start tag follows start tag of C and whose end tag precedes end tag of C preceding (green): elements whose end tag precedes start tag of C following (red): elements whose start tag follows end tag of C preceding, following, ancestor, descendant and self together partition the tree into 5 subtrees

23. Node Tests axes other than attribute and namespace include elements, text nodes, comments and processing instructions principal type of these axes is element node test further restricts nodes considered by node name chapter: nodes with name "chapter" *: nodes with any name (of the axis principal type) by node type node(): all nodes text(): character data nodes comment(): comment nodes processing-instruction(): processing instruction nodes

24. Examples child::*[position()=2] second child element descendant::node() all descendant nodes (elements, text nodes, comments or processing instructions) following- sibling::*[position()=last()] rightmost sibling element child::section[position()=2]/child::s ubsection[position()=1] first subsection of the second section

25. Abbreviated syntax if path starts with //, initial context is the root NormalsyntaxAbbreviat ion child::nothing(child is default axis) Attribute::@ /descendant-or- self::node()/ // self::node(). parent::node().. [position()=i][i][i]

26. Examples using abbreviations *[2] second child element //* all descendant elements of the root //text() all text node descendants of the root section[2]/subsection[1] first subsection of the second section.//@href all href attributes in descendants of context node(s) //section[.//image]/title the titles of sections which contain images

27. The family example Janet John Tom Dick Harry

28. Location paths on family in the context of the family element, parent[@spouse='p2']/name produces Janet the name of the person whose spouse attribute has value 'p2' parent[id(@spouse)[name='John']]/ name produces Janet the name of the person whose spouse is named John

29. More location paths on family in the context of the family element, id(child[name='Dick']/@siblings)/n ame produces Tom Harry the names of Dick's siblings child[id(@siblings)[name='Tom']]/n ame produces Dick Harry the names of the children who have Tom as a sibling

30. More Information www.w3.org/TR/xpath W3C's Recommendation on XPath www.vbxml.com/xpathvisualize r/ page for downloading the XPath visualiser www.w3schools.com/xpath/ XPath tutorial www.vbxml.com/xsl/tutorials/i ntro/default.asp XSLT and XPath tutorial