Guide Section: Processing Object Data | EASAP Tree: DATA PROCESSING → LIST

XPath is a standard xml query language with many references and tutorials available on the internet.

XPATH supports XPath version 1.0.

• XPATH uses XPath path expressions to select nodes or node-sets in an XML document either from,
  • File: with an xml file
    • or
  • Value: completed with SCALAR reference or literal string of xml

XPATH
Essential Parameters:
Query:	The XPath query to run, which may contain object references
Optional Parameters:
Value:	This should be used if the xml to parse is in a SCALAR reference.
File:	This should be used if the xml to parse is in a file.
Show Complete Results:	If the query matches a node, this allows child nodes to be returned also. (default→TRUE).
Show Attribute Values:	When matching an attribute the query can return: Name, Value or both. (default→Value).
Use Namespaces:	For large xml files that do not use namespaces, setting this to FALSE can improve performance.
Default Namespace Prefix:	If the xml file contains entries such as xmlns=”…, rather than xmlns:mynamespace=”…, then this parameter allows a default namespace to be specified and that namespace may be used within Xpath queries.
Encoding:	This is used in conjunction with File: to specify the file type. The default type is 'UTF-8'
Delimiter:	Character to delimit the SCALAR reference in Value:(default→%).

Our example follows the example at the external page:

• https://www.w3schools.com/xml/xpath_syntax.asp

Create the xml file below:

bookstore.xml

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
   <bookstore>
    <book>
     <title lang="en">Harry Potter</title>
     <price>29.99</price>
    </book>
    <book>
     <title lang="en">Learning XML</title>
     <price>39.95</price>
   </book>
  </bookstore>

The Tree and EASAP output for these four Query: parameters: