XPathJS

XPathJS is a pure JavaScript implementation of XPath 1.0 and DOM Level 3 XPath specifications.

Features

• Works in all major browsers: IE8+, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera
• Supports XML namespaces!
• No external dependencies, include just a single .js file
• Regression tested against hundreds of unit test cases.
• Works in pages served as both, text/html and application/xhtml+xml content types.
• Benchmarked against other XPath implementations.

Getting Started

1. npm install xpathjs then import 'xpathjs' at the top of your js file
   
   or
   
   Add <script src="https://unpkg.com/@mass-edge/xpathjs@0.2.1/dist/xpathjs.min.js"></script> in the \ of your HTML document.

2. Initialize XPathJS:

     // bind XPath methods to document and window objects
     // NOTE: This will overwrite native XPath implementation if it exists
     window.XPathJS.bindDomLevel3XPath();

3. You can now use XPath expressions to query the DOM:

     var result = document.evaluate(
         '//ul/li/text()', // XPath expression
         document, // context node
         null, // namespace resolver
         XPathResult.ORDERED_NODE_SNAPSHOT_TYPE
     );
   
     // loop through results
     for (var i = 0; i < result.snapshotLength; i++) {
         var node = result.snapshotItem(i);
         alert(node.nodeValue);
     }

Take a look at some working examples to get a better idea of how to use XPathJS.

We would strongly recommend for you to take a look at the CAVEATS document to get a better understanding of XPathJS limitations.

More examples, configuration options, and caveat info coming soon...

Background

So how did XPathJS come to be? Well originally we were looking for an implementation of a cross-browser XForms solution in hopes to alleviate the pain and complexity that comes with creating normal HTML forms. Unfortunately, we found out that there is neither an XForms engine that is fully implemented, nor does it support all browsers. So we thought, ok let's try to build our own! Then we realized that XForms makes extensive use of XPath. And again, we could not find a fully functional cross-browser XPath implementation. Long story short, that's how XPathJS was born.

By releasing XPathJS, we hope to help promote the adoption of open standards in the community.

Development

• Project website
• Source code
• Issue tracker

XPathJS is developed by Andrej Pavlovic. You are more than welcome to contribute by logging issues, sending pull requests, or just giving feedback.