XPath Cheatsheet

XPath (XML Path Language) is an expression language for selecting nodes from an XML or HTML document.

Testing

XPath Testbed

Test and experiment with XPath expressions interactively:

• XPath Testbed (whitebeam.org)

Browser Console

$x("//div")

Available directly inside Chrome, Edge, and Firefox DevTools consoles.

Selectors

Descendant Selectors

Attribute Selectors

Order & Index Selectors

Sibling Elements

jQuery Equivalents

Conditionals & Logic

Class Check

//div[contains(concat(' ',normalize-space(@class),' '),' foobar ')]

XPath 1.0 lacks a whitespace-delimited token matching operator; this standard workaround matches whole classes safely.

Expressions

Steps and Axes

Anatomy of an expression:

Prefixes

Expressions can start with any of these prefixes.

Axes

Steps are separated by /. Use // to match any descendant level.

Steps

//div
//div[@name='box']
//*[@id='link']

Steps can contain tag names and predicates ([...]). Both are optional. Steps can also target node values:

//a/text()     #=> "Go home"
//a/@href      #=> "index.html"
//a/*          #=> All children of <a>

Predicates

Predicates

//div[true()]
//div[@class="head"]
//div[@class="head"][@id="top"]

Filter down node sets when conditions match. Predicates can be chained consecutively.

Operators

# Comparison
//a[@id = "xyz"]
//a[@id != "xyz"]
//a[@price > 25]

# Logic (and/or)
//div[@id="head" and position()=2]
//div[(x and y) or not(z)]

Using Nodes in Predicates

# Inside functions
//ul[count(li) > 2]
//ul[count(li[@class='hide']) > 0]

# Returns <ul> only if it has an <li> child
//ul[li]

Indexing

//a[1]                  # First <a> (1-based index)
//a[last()]             # Last <a>
//ol/li[2]              # Second <li>
//ol/li[position()=2]   # Same as above
//ol/li[position()>1]   # All except the first

Chained Order

a[1][@href='/']
a[@href='/'][1]

Order matters: the first takes item 1 and checks its href; the second filters by href first and picks the first match.

Nested Predicates

//section[.//h1[@id='hi']]

Returns <section> elements containing an <h1> descendant with id='hi'.

Functions

Node Functions

name()                     # Starts with: //[starts-with(name(), 'h')]
text()                     # Exact match: //button[text()="Submit"]
                           # Value: //button/text()
lang(str)
namespace-uri()
count()                    # //table[count(tr)=1]
position()                 # //ol/li[position()=2]

Boolean Functions

not(expr)                  # //button[not(starts-with(text(),"Submit"))]

String Functions

contains()                 # //span[contains(@class,"head")]
starts-with()              # //span[starts-with(@class,"head")]
ends-with()                # //span[ends-with(@class,"head")]

concat(x, y)
substring(str, start, len)
substring-before("01/02", "/")  #=> "01"
substring-after("01/02", "/")   #=> "02"
translate()
normalize-space()
string-length()

Type Conversion

string()
number()
boolean()

Axes

Using Axes

//ul/li                       # ul > li
//ul/child::li                # ul > li (explicit child axis)
//ul/following-sibling::li    # ul ~ li
//ul/descendant-or-self::li   # ul li
//ul/ancestor-or-self::li     # $('ul').closest('li')

Axis syntax:

Other Axes

Unions

//a | //span

Use | to merge two or more node sets together into a union.

Examples

Common Query Patterns

//*                 # All elements
count(//*)          # Count all elements
(//h1)[1]/text()    # Text of the very first h1 heading in document
//li[span]          # Find <li> containing a <span> child
//ul/li/..          # Navigate back to parent <ul>

Finding Parent Elements

//section[h1[@id='section-name']]

Finds a <section> containing a direct child h1#section-name.

//section[.//h1[@id='section-name']]

Finds a <section> containing any descendant h1#section-name.