What is XPath?
Being a major element in the XSLT standard, XPath is used to navigate through elements and attributes in an XML document. It stands for XML Path Language because it uses “path like” syntax to identify and navigate nodes in an XML document. With over 200 built-in functions is also a W3C recommendation.
XPath Path Expressions:
To select nodes or node-sets in an XML document, XPath uses path expressions that look similar to the path expressions used with the traditional computer file systems.
XPath Standard Functions:
There are over 200 built-in functions provided for string values, numeric values, booleans, date and time comparison, node manipulation, sequence manipulation, and much more in XPath. In languages like JavaScript, Java, XML Schema, PHP, Python, C and C++, and others, XPath expressions can be used.
XPath is Used in XSLT:
In the XSLT standard, XPath is a major element which means that we can take great advantage of our XSLT knowledge, with XPath knowledge.
XPath is a W3C Recommendation:
| Version | Date | W3C Recommendation |
| XPath 1.0 | November 16, 1999 | Became a W3C Recommendation. |
| XPath 2.0 | January 23, 2007 | Became a W3C Recommendation. |
| XPath 3.0 | April 8, 2014 | Became a W3C Recommendation. |