Chapter 4. XPath

As mentioned in the earlier chapters, XML documents can be used for the transfer of data. The data in an XML document may be retrieved either with the JAXP (Java API for XML Processing) DOM and SAX APIs, or with the JAXP XPath API. Addressing an XML document with XPath has the advantage that a single node may be selected directly without iterating over a node set. With SAX and DOM APIs, node lists have to be iterated over to access a particular node. Another advantage of navigating an XML document with XPath is that an attribute node may be selected directly. With DOM and SAX APIs, an element node has to be selected before an element attribute can be selected. In this chapter we shall discuss XPath support in JDeveloper.

What is XPath?

XPath is a language for addressing an XML document's elements and attributes. As an example, say you receive an XML document that contains the details of a shipment and you want to retrieve the element/attribute values from the XML document...