What's the difference between // and /?

// matches the element anywhere in the document (any depth), while / only matches a direct child of the previous step.

Does this work for both HTML and XML?

Yes — XPath syntax is the same for both. This tool doesn't validate against a specific document, so the generated expression will work wherever XPath 1.0 syntax is supported (browsers, most scraping libraries, XML tooling).

XPath

XPath Builder

Choose an element, add attribute or text conditions, and chain descendant steps together to build an XPath expression visually.

Element

Relationship to previous step

Element name (optional)

Attribute conditions

Text equals (optional)

Text contains (optional)

Position (optional)

Generated XPath

//*

How it works

XPath locates nodes in an XML or HTML document using a path syntax: //div[@class="card"] selects any div anywhere in the document with a matching classattribute. This builder assembles that syntax from plain fields — element name, attribute conditions, text conditions, and position — so you don't need to remember the exact predicate syntax.

Add another step to descend further into the tree, either as any descendant (//) or a direct child (/). Want to test an XPath against real markup instead? Use the XPath Tester.

Examples

Element with a class

Any div with a specific class.

//div[@class="card"]

Link containing text

An anchor whose text contains a word.

//a[contains(text(), "Sign up")]

Nth item

The third list item.

//li[3]

Frequently asked questions