XPath axe
child:: axis
Immediate children: the default axis, which is why it is almost never written out. It does not reach grandchildren, and never selects attributes.
Every unprefixed step is a child:: step: `lines/line` means `child::lines/child::line`. It selects immediate children only — grandchildren need another step, or the descendant axis.
Writing it explicitly is rare but occasionally clearer when several axes appear in one expression.
- Syntax
child::name — or just name- Returns
- node-set
- Kind
- Axe
- Version
- XPath 1.0 (libxml2)
Worked examples
Each result below is what the evaluator returned, asserted on every test run. An empty result means an empty node-set — which is an answer, not an error.
The sample documents
Every example on this page runs against this document. The sitemap one is namespaced on purpose — almost every real XML document is, and that changes which expressions match.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<order id="A-1001" tier="gold">
<customer country="NO">Ada Lovelace</customer>
<!-- priority customer -->
<?audit retained?>
<lines>
<line sku="WIDGET-1" qty="2"><price>14.50</price></line>
<line sku="WIDGET-2" qty="1"><price>39.00</price></line>
<line sku="GIFT-WRAP" qty="1"><price>0.00</price></line>
</lines>
<note> Deliver after 09:00 </note>
</order>Related
- descendant:: and descendant-or-self::Everything below a node, at any depth. // is shorthand for descendant-or-self, which is why //a//b can be expensive.
- parent:: axisThe node directly above. Abbreviated .., and the way to select a node by what it contains. An attribute has a parent even though it is not a child.
- self:: axisThe context node itself, abbreviated as a dot. Useful as a test: self::line is true only when the context node is a line, which filters a mixed node-set.
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