Best XPath tools [closed]

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What tools are you guys using for XPath and why? Right now I'm using

• SketchPath because its totally awesome, but its a windows app that needs to be installed
• WhiteBeam online XPath test bedbecause you can test expressions from the website

SketchPath seems to stand out the most to me because it actually helps you create the xpath and it is very advanced. If you haven't tried it you should.

Cons to SketchPath: you have to install it on the machine, otherwise it is fantastic.

Cons to WhiteBeam: you have to upload your file which I don't always want to do for security reasons and the file size you can upload has some limit on it, and uploading a file is annoying anyways. Also I think there might be some subtle differences between the xpath used for that tool and when running a .NET app. But don't remember any right now. Just keep it in mind.

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[Update] XMLQuire was originally recommended in this answer. It was a free XML editor for Windows with the SketchPath XPath Editor built in for XPath testing.

XMLQuire has not been maintained for a few years and has now been retired.

For XPath experimentation etc. XMLQuire's author now recommends the XPath Notebook extension for Visual Studio Code. Developed by the same author, this now supports XPath 3.1 courtesy of Saxonica's Saxon-JS processor.

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If you're in a web dev environment, Firefox has a number of great tools for XPath support and analysis:

• Firebug has built-in XPath support
• XPath Checker I have found to be great

and also maybe of use:

• XPath Runner
• FireXPath

Be careful with Firebug - the right-click "copy XPath" command copies the path as all lower-case, and some XML parsers (like the MXSML parser used in FinalBuilder) are case-sensitive - so you'll need to correct the casing of your Firebug-copied XPath statement otherwise your parser won't find any matching nodes.

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with this xpath tester you can test standard XPath expressions

You can also save your XPath's and XMLs at any point of time to return to it later or post a link in web or email, which is a really handy feature.

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SketchPath is the best tool for XPath that I have used so far. I have used oXygen as well, but prefer SketchPath to oXygen for XPath.

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I like XPather, a Firefox plugin. It's simple and easy-to-use and it's not a separate program to run as long as you have Firefox running which is when and where I'm usually using XPath.

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I use oXygen for xpath work. It's rather easy to test your expression against xml on file. You set the target xml file once and then it's just a button to click to test your expression.