Tool to find out XPath

Question

I find XPath difficult to get my head around at times and am looking for a tools that I can point at a line in an xml config file an it will tell me the xpath to the attributes that I need.

Any help with this would be much appreciated>

score 7 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 01 '18 at 05:46

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I've used the "Buba XPath builder" to do this. SketchPath (now XMLQuire) may also do the trick:

http://qutoric.com/xmlquire/

edited Mar 01 '18 at 05:46

Undo

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answered Dec 16 '09 at 15:07

James Kolpack

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score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 16 '09 at 15:08

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Visual XPath is full of win.

answered Dec 16 '09 at 15:08

Ta01

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Did you try http://cid-4bb423973bbcdc56.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Public - he says his host has problems – Ta01 Dec 16 '09 at 18:06
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Appears to now be called XMLQuire: http://qutoric.com/xmlquire/ Only played with it so far but it seems like a really cool tool – Martin McNulty Sep 15 '11 at 09:38

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 16 '09 at 15:14

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If you use firefox you might want to check out XPather. Even if you find another tool, this is a handy thing to have around when you just want to check something out quickly if you are like me and almost always have a browser window already open.

answered Dec 16 '09 at 15:14

Dolphin

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score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 14 '11 at 11:28

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Xpather is the best tool to find the xpath.

http://xpath.alephzarro.com/

answered Nov 14 '11 at 11:28

user1029415

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score 2 · Answer 5 · answered Feb 17 '12 at 10:42

The Best tool is Firepath when it is installed over Firebug. You can easily find the Xpath using it. But it only works with Mozilla The Download link is: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firepath/ Or simply go to addons and click get extensions and type firepath.

You need to have firebug installed.

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Jul 31 '12 at 10:13

I want to echo XPather as my tool of choice, although it's not yet (as far as I'm aware) available for the latest version of FF. In order to better learn XPath, XPather gives you two good benefits:

You can tinker with the XPath in the window dialogue and see how it affects which elements are matched. In this way you can make your paths more general & slowly build on them but while making sure you're getting no false positives. This is how I learnt XPath.
It has an in-built 'cheat sheet' of selectors you won't use that often, but you want to have to hand when you need them — sibling, parent, does not contain etc.

Most of the time in my work I find it's not important to find an XPath that matches, but the best match for what I'm looking for (most specific for speed, most general for flexibility and matching similar nodes).

Firebug itself will give you an exact XPath for an element, but it makes me think of writing automation tests in Selenium recorder — it's OK if you're targetting that particular node that will always be in that exact location on the page. Whereas you could be targeting an ad banner that you don't know the exact location of, but know it's rough whereabouts — the RHS column on every page, for instance. This often happens with a CMS backed site, if you're testing against a system that real content-editors are using too.

score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Dec 16 '09 at 15:18

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http://xpathvisualizer.codeplex.com/ is a nice tool.

answered Dec 16 '09 at 15:18

dwo

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Tool to find out XPath

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