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HTML

Posted by Y B
Y B
14,136 Points

I've done a lot of the front end track but still no idea what Xpath is? (is there a course that covers it?)

I keep seeing Xpath mentioned everywhere but I still have no idea what it is. So far on the front end I've done

HTML deep dive CSS Basics Javascript basics, JS loops, JQuery Build an interactive Website AJax (in progress) Website Optimisation/Chrome Dev tools (in progress)

Is there a course that covers this as I'm still in the dark?

Thanks

2 Answers

moonshine
moonshine
8,449 Points

XPath is a language for retrieving information from XML documents, just like how SQL is used to to retrieve data from databases. So XPath is only useful when you have an XML file and want to find some information in it.

XPath is implemented in JavaScript (and other languages as well). For example:

var xmlFile = getXMLFile('tree.xml');

/* Query string to get the first branch node in the XML file. */
var xPathString = 'root/trunk/branch[0]';

/* Search the XML file. */
var xpe = new XPathEvaluator();
var result = xpe.evaluate(xPathString, xmlFile, null, XPathResult.ANY_TYPE, null);

Here are some more resources:

Y B
Y B
14,136 Points

Thanks for the info and the resources that's a great help. ( I like the SQL analogy).

Jeff Lemay
Jeff Lemay
14,268 Points
Jeff Lemay
Jeff Lemay
14,268 Points

I've been working as a front-end developer for a few years and I'd never even heard of Xpath. It is definitely not something you need to know, just another piece of functionality available to you.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/XPath

Y B
Y B
14,136 Points

Thanks that's very good to know particularly with your experience. I've seen it mentioned with regard to web scraping a lot and I've seen in Chrome dev tools and mentioned in a few other places. Good to know I wasn't necessarily missing out on a huge area that was potentially important.