In Brief

• Each location step is made up of an axis, a node test, and zero or more predicates.

• An axis indicates how to search for nodes. Here are the XPath 1.0 axes:

  • The child axis

  • The attribute axis

  • The ancestor axis

  • The ancestor-or-self axis

  • The descendant axis

  • The descendant-or-self axis

  • The following axis

  • The following-sibling axis

  • The namespace axis

  • The parent axis

  • The preceding axis

  • The preceding-sibling axis

  • The self axis

• You can use these node tests in XPath 1.0:

  • The * wildcard character matches any element or attribute name .

  • A name matches a node with that name (for example, planet will match a <planet> element).

  • The comment() node test selects comment nodes.

  • The node() node test selects any type of node.

  • The processing-instruction() node test selects a processing instruction node.

  • The text() node test selects a text node.

• Predicates are enclosed in [ and ] and may contain any valid XPath 1.0 expression.