Debugging XPath Queries

Sample Image - screenshot.jpg

Introduction

This is a small application I wrote when I was stuck in front of an XPath query that I just couldn't understand. Took about an hour and a half to whip it up. The idea is to let you execute a query and see for yourself the results that are returned.

There are other tools that does it, but either they are Java based and require > 15 Mb support libraries or they are web based (which I hate).

The Code

The application gets its input from one of two sources - a file or the clipboard, loads it into an XmlDocument and start executing queries against it, showing you the result on the way.

I didn't built it to be performant or correct, just to do the job, so use it the next time you've XPath problems, and you'll like it. The other solution that I found was XmlSpy at 300$ +

License

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About the Author

goerge@Mailinator.com

United States

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Generating xpath add-on (quick and dirty) [modified]

MikeEast

22:24 16 Jan '08

Hello all!

Lazy as i am, I was looking for a solution to get an xpath expression from clicking on an element in an XML DOM.

This article was a great start and here is my simple add-on:

private string calculateXpath()
{
    if (XmlTree.SelectedNode != null)
    {
        List<string> xpathItems = new List<string>();
        XmlNode node = ((TreeAndXmlNode)XmlTree.SelectedNode.Tag).xnode;
        while (node.ParentNode != null)
        {
            int index = 0;
            XmlNode currentNode = node;
            while (currentNode.PreviousSibling != null)
            {
                if (currentNode.Name == node.Name)
                    index++;
                currentNode = currentNode.PreviousSibling;
            }
            xpathItems.Add(string.Format("{0}[{1}]", node.Name, index));
 
            node = node.ParentNode;
        }
        xpathItems.Reverse();
        return string.Format("/{0}", string.Join("/", xpathItems.ToArray()));
    }
}

It generates xpaths like: /catalog[1]/dvd[14]/title[1]

It would be nice to get xpath based on other stuff than index, but this is what I needed. Developing this further is up to you.

Cheers!

::m

modified on Thursday, January 17, 2008 4:37:39 AM