XPath Tutorial

Foxdie included in category Selenium

2022-05-05 2025-10-21 150 words One minute

Contents

1 What is XPath?

https://www.w3schools.com/xml/xpath_intro.asp

XPath is a major element in the XSLT standard.

XPath can be used to navigate through elements and attributes in an XML document.

XPath stands for XML Path Language
XPath uses “path like” syntax to identify and navigate nodes in an XML document
XPath contains over 200 built-in functions
XPath is a major element in the XSLT standard
XPath is a W3C recommendation

2 XPath Syntax

//tag[@attribute="value"]
<!--example-->
//div[@class="price"]
<!--list of elements-->
(//div[@class="price"])[1]
(//div[@class="price"])[2]  <!-- and so on... -->

3 Absolute and relative XPath

Absolute XPath: Complete Path from Root Element

Relative XPath: You choose Element you want to start from (Use // if you choose Relative XPath)

Example:

<html>
  <head>...</head>
  <body>
    <div class="head_wrap">
      <div class="head_bg">...</div>
      <div class="sidebar">...</div>
      <div class="head_menu">
        <div class="categories">...</div>
        <div class="main_menu">
          <div class="li_menu">...</div>
          <div class="li_menu">
            <a href="/goodchoice/">Good choice</a>
          </div>
        </div>  
      </div>
    </div>
  </body>
</html>

Relative XPath:

//div[@class="main_menu"]/div[2]/a

Absolute XPath:

html/body/div/div[3]/div[2]/div[2]/a