XPath Data Model

• A document is a tree of nodes

• Seven kinds of nodes:

  root node

  The document itself. The root node’s children are the comments and processing instructions in the prolog and epilog and the root element of the document.

  element node

  An element. Its children are all the child elements, text nodes, comments, and processing instructions the element contains. An element also has namespaces and attributes. However, these are not child nodes.

  attribute node

  An attribute other than one that declares a namespace

  text node

  The maximum uninterrupted run of text between tags, comments, and processing instructions. White space is included.

  comment node

  A comment

  processing instruction node

  A processing instruction

  namespace node

  A namespace mapping in scope on an element

• The XPath data model does not include:

  • entity references

  • CDATA sections

  • the document type declaration

  • namespace declarations