XPath is a language for addressing parts of an XML document, for those who are not familiar with this language - here are the W3C specifications and here is the W3schools tutorial. Now that we know XPath, lets get to the point of that post which is - Visual XPath.
This is a free graphical XPath query tool which have many great features, some of those features are:
- Load a XML file and see it in a form of tree.
- Generate XPath queries dynamically by selecting XML nodes from the loaded file.
- Generate queries for individual attributes.
- Write your own XPath query, execute it on the loaded file and get immediate results.
- Get the C# code to read an XML file and perform your specific query.
- Get all of the namespaces in the loaded XML file.
- Can be integrated with Visual Studio (see details on this site).
Yes, I know that this is an old tool and I also know that XLinq (Linq to XML that was introduced in .Net 3.5) is much newer than XPath, but I still truly recommend this tool, it helps me a lot during my work.
Enjoy it…
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Allen Said on Apr 25, 2008 :
SketchPath is another great XPath tool.
http://pgfearo.googlepages.com/
Phil Fearon Said on Apr 26, 2008 :
@Shahar
Its great that XPath still gets a mention in the .Net context in the face of the LINQ to XML wave. XPath 2.0 using Saxon.Net does of course provide LINQ some healthy competition.
@Allen
Thanks for mentioning SketchPath too. Its good that people get to know that other tools exist as well as the classic Visual XPath which has certainly stood the test of time in the popularity stakes.