XPath Nodes

## XPath Tutorial

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## XPath Reference

XPath Functions

# XPath Nodes

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## XPath Terminology

### Nodes

In XPath, there are seven kinds of nodes: element, attribute, text, namespace, processing-instruction, comment, and document nodes.

XML documents are treated as trees of nodes. The topmost element of the tree is called the root element.

Look at the following XML document:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<bookstore>
<book>
<title lang="en">Harry Potter</title>
<author>J K. Rowling</author>
<year>2005</year>
<price>29.99</price>
</book>
</bookstore>

Example of nodes in the XML document above:

<bookstore> (root element node)
<author>J K. Rowling</author> (element node)
lang="en" (attribute node)

### Atomic values

Atomic values are nodes with no children or parent.

Example of atomic values:

J K. Rowling
"en"

### Items

Items are atomic values or nodes.

## Relationship of Nodes

### Parent

Each element and attribute has one parent.

In the following example; the book element is the parent of the title, author, year, and price:

<book>
<title>Harry Potter</title>
<author>J K. Rowling</author>
<year>2005</year>
<price>29.99</price>
</book>

### Children

Element nodes may have zero, one or more children.

In the following example; the title, author, year, and price elements are all children of the book element:

<book>
<title>Harry Potter</title>
<author>J K. Rowling</author>
<year>2005</year>
<price>29.99</price>
</book>

### Siblings

Nodes that have the same parent.

In the following example; the title, author, year, and price elements are all siblings:

<book>
<title>Harry Potter</title>
<author>J K. Rowling</author>
<year>2005</year>
<price>29.99</price>
</book>

### Ancestors

A node's parent, parent's parent, etc.

In the following example; the ancestors of the title element are the book element and the bookstore element:

<bookstore>
<book>
<title>Harry Potter</title>
<author>J K. Rowling</author>
<year>2005</year>
<price>29.99</price>
</book>
</bookstore>

### Descendants

A node's children, children's children, etc.

In the following example; descendants of the bookstore element are the book, title, author, year, and price elements:

<bookstore>
<book>
<title>Harry Potter</title>
<author>J K. Rowling</author>
<year>2005</year>
<price>29.99</price>
</book>
</bookstore>
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