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XPATH Demo

A basic introduction to XPATH in java. In this tutorial, we will demonstrate a few ways to extract and parse XML content.

The XML content could be:

  • An XML configuration for your application
  • A XML response from an API e.g. SOAP/XML integration
  • Data extracted into an XML file and you need to traverse the content to load into memory

Lessons

  • How to create your own XPATH expressions e.g. "/person/name"
  • How to use text() function in your expression e.g. "/person/name/text()"
  • How to use local-name() function in your expression e.g. /person/*[local-name() = 'test']
  • How to get children nodes in an XML content e.g. "/person/contacts/child::*"

Use Cases

  • System configurations can be saved in an XML file e.g. maven uses XML for the Project Object Model (POM) file, Hibernate and Log4j and many more libraries support XML configurations.
  • Data storage - you can use XML to store some data that is loaded by the application during start up. This can be thought as a configuration too.
  • SOAP/XML integrations - when you get a headache dealing with XSDs and WSDL and generation of stubs, you can use raw HTTP request and extract the response via XPATH. You may need this when integrating to a legacy system.
  • Web Automation - automating web app testing using Selenium requires web testing

Any other use cases? You can contribute to the repo.

Note

This repo is created to help someone get started with XPATH. XPATH is more than what I have demostrated and there are many tutorials out there. You now have the power to read and practise.