Common XPath expressions

Although you'll probably walk through the XML DOM on a node-by-node basis, sometimes you might need to find a particular node directly, regardless of your current position. This is very quick and easy with the xmlNode.selectNodes(expression) method. This method will return a NodeList collection of nodes, which you can count with the length property and access through the item(index) method. The xmlNode.selectSingleNode(expression) method selects the first node it encounters (which is faster than using selectNodes(expression).item(0) constructs).

/TBMData//News[@agency='...']/Article[@id='...']

A particular news article, from a particular news agency.

/TBMData//News/Article[@id='...']

A particular news article, regardless of news agency.

/TBMData/Sector[@id='...']//*/Chart

Select all charts for a particular sector.

/TBMData/Sector/Organisation/Issue[@exchange='...' and Ticker[@type='...' and @id='...']]

Select a particular issue node, based on a exchange-ticker combination.