Interactive Xpath Expression Builder

December 17, 2004

I use Xpath queries about once a year, so of course I completely forget the syntax every time I come back to it. And each time this happens, I somehow find Aaron Skonnard's very cool web-based interactive Xpath Expression Builder, which lets you hack on Xpath with real time visual feedback as you type. It's great. Except this time I couldn't find it!

I guess there's been a bit of a shakeup; Aaron works for PluralSight now. The top google hits for the interactive Xpath expression builder on the DevelopMentor site return a glorified 404 page. According to his blog post, all the DevelopMentor samples have been moved to this confusing ServerSide.NET page. And they're now distributed as zip files, which completely ruins the immediate feedback that made the interactive XPath builder pages so useful. For convenience, I put the XPath Expression Builder pages up on this server:

• Interactive XPath Expression Builder 1.0 (the classic)
• Interactive XPath Expression Builder 4.0 (all new and improved)

Note that you'll need IE5+ and MSXML 3.0 for these to work, due to the heavy client-side scripting.

If you're forgetful like me and have no idea what to type, start with "Invoices/Invoice". MSDN has the best XPath syntax examples and reference pages.