Query XML with XPath

Extract matching elements from XML with simple XPath-style paths and indexes.

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ToolXML XPath Query
Input
Output
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How it works

XML is parsed into an object tree, then slash-separated names, wildcard segments, and simple numeric predicates are walked. Matching nodes are rebuilt as XML fragments; this is a limited evaluator rather than a namespace-aware XPath engine.

  • A root slash and element paths cover common extraction.
  • Indexes are one-based to match XPath positions.

Worked example

Find all admin users by role attribute
Use XPath attribute filter to extract user elements with role='admin'
Input
											<root>
  <users>
    <user id="1" role="admin"><name>Alice</name></user>
    <user id="2" role="user"><name>Bob</name></user>
    <user id="3" role="admin"><name>Carol</name></user>
  </users>
</root>
Output
												Results: <root>
  <users>
    <user id="1" role="admin">
      <name>Alice</name>
    </user>
    <user id="2" role="user">
      <name>Bob</name>
    </user>
    <user id="3" role="admin">
      <name>Carol</name>
    </user>
  </users>
</root>
Count: 1

When to use this

SOAP responses, RSS feeds, and XML migration previews query nodes.

Edge cases

  • Namespace prefixes can be treated as literal keys rather than resolved URIs.
  • Unsupported predicates are not evaluated like full XPath.
  • Repeated siblings need an index or wildcard to select the intended node.

References