XPath 1.0 Tutorial

language for addressing parts of XML documents in XSLT 1.0 providing as well basic facilities for manipulation of strings, numbers and booleans

XPath is described in XPath 1.0 standard. In this tutorial selected XPath features are demonstrated on many examples.

Standard excerpt:
XPath is the result of an effort to provide a common syntax and semantics for functionality shared between XSL Transformations and XPointer. The primary purpose of XPath is to address parts of an XML document. In support of this primary purpose, it also provides basic facilities for manipulation of strings, numbers and booleans. XPath uses a compact, non-XML syntax to facilitate use of XPath within URIs and XML attribute values. XPath operates on the abstract, logical structure of an XML document, rather than its surface syntax. XPath gets its name from its use of a path notation as in URLs for navigating through the hierarchical structure of an XML document.

List of XPaths

XPath as filesystem addressing
Start with //
All elements: *
Further conditions inside []
Attributes
Attribute values
Nodes counting
Playing with names of selected elements
Length of string
Combining XPaths with |
Child axis
Descendant axis
Parent axis
Ancestor axis
Following-sibling axis
Preceding-sibling axis
Following axis
Preceding axis
Descendant-or-self axis
Ancestor-or-self axis
Orthogonal axes
Numeric operations