XPath Tester Online
Run XPath On Your XML

What An XPath Tester Online Does For You

XPath is a small language for picking parts out of XML. A good query saves you a long loop of code. But a wrong query returns nothing, and you do not know why. So testing first saves time.

This tester shows you why. First, paste your XML and type an expression. The matches appear at once, each with its full path and its value. Then click a match, and the tool jumps to that spot in your XML.

The engine follows XPath 1.0. That is the version browsers, Java, PHP, Python and most XML tools use. So a query that works here works in your code.

Besides testing, the page has three more jobs. It draws your XML as a tree, turns XML into plain text, and escapes or stringifies text. All four share one box, so you never paste twice.

Everything runs in your browser. Your XML never leaves your device. That matters, because XML files often hold orders, settings and private feeds.

XPath Evaluator Online With Clear Results

First, type an expression such as //book[price > 10]/title. Then the list shows each title that fits. Every row has a kind, a path such as /library/book[2]/title, and the text inside.

Also, if the result is not a list, you still see it. A query such as count(//book) gives a number. A query such as contains(., "XML") gives true or false.

This xpath evaluator online also explains problems. A typo shows the position of the mistake. A valid query that finds nothing gets a hint to check names and case.

For more detail, see: MDN guide to XPath.

Click A Match To Find It

Large XML files are hard to read. So each match is a button, and that helps a lot. Click it, and the tool selects that element in your text and scrolls to it.

This makes debugging fast. Then you see the query, the result and the source in one view. In fact, you can fix a query in seconds.

XML Tree Viewer

First, switch to the tree mode to see the shape of your XML. Each tag opens and closes. Attributes show next to their tag, and comments appear in grey.

The tree also counts elements, attributes and depth. So you learn how big the file is at a glance.

XML To Text Converter

Sometimes you only want the words. So the text mode strips every tag and keeps the text, one piece per line. You can join the pieces with a space, a tab or a comma.

Also, attribute values can come along. Then you can copy the result or save it as a text file. Finally, paste it into a report or a search index.

Escape, Stringify And URL Tools

The last mode handles strings. First, escape turns an ampersand or a less-than sign into an entity. Then unescape does the reverse. Next, stringify wraps text in quotes with safe escapes, and parse reads it back. URL encode and decode work too.

A Short XPath Cheat Sheet

One slash goes down one level, and two slashes search every level. So /library/book is exact, while //book finds a book anywhere.

An at sign picks an attribute, as in //book/@id. A dot means the current node, and two dots mean its parent.

Square brackets filter. A number picks a position, such as [2]. A test picks by value, such as [price > 10] or [@lang="en"].

Then add functions when you need them. For example, count() counts nodes, and contains() tests for a word. Also, text() returns the words inside a tag.

What XPath 1.0 Covers

First, you get all thirteen axes, such as child, descendant, parent and following-sibling. You also get predicates, unions and every XPath 1.0 function, such as count, sum, contains, substring and translate.

Also, a few helpers from later versions, such as lower-case and ends-with, work too. Namespace prefixes match as you write them. So a tag such as x:note needs the x: in your query.