om.DomNode.selectByPath

Finds descendant DOM nodes from an XPath-like pattern.

Syntax

selectByPath(
   path STRING )
  RETURNS om.NodeList
  1. path is an XPath-like pattern.

Usage

The selectByPath() method scans the DOM tree for descendant nodes from the specified XPath-like pattern.

Important: The selectByPath() method supports a limited XPath syntax.

The search pattern must always start with / or //, must contain at least on tag name, and the attributes expression allows only equality comparison.

The pattern supported by selectByPath() is limited to the following syntax:

{ / | // } TagName [ [@AttributeName="Value"] ] [...]

DOM node tag names and attributes names are case-sensitive.

The method creates a list of nodes as an om.NodeList object. This list object is then used to process the nodes found.

Table 1. XPath examples
XPath expression Description 
/Vehicle

The document element <Vehicle/> of this document.

 
//Vehicle

All <Vehicle/> elements in the document.

 
//Transport/Vehicle

All <Vehicle/> elements that are children of <Transport/> elements.

 
//Transport//Engine

All <Engine/> elements that are arbitrary descendants of <Transport/> elements.

 
//Transport/*/Engine

All <Engine/> elements that are grandchildren of <Transport/> elements.

 
//Transport/*

All elements that are children of <Transport/> elements.

 
//Engine[@power="185"]

All <Engine/> elements where the power attribute equals 185.

 
//Vehicle[@type="car"]/Engine[@power="185"]

All <Engine/> elements where the power attribute equals 185, children of <Vehicle/> elements where the type attribute is "car".

Example

DEFINE node om.DomNode,
       nodelist om.NodeList
...
LET nodelist = node.selectByPath("//Grid/Table[@tabName=\"t1\"]")

For a complete example, see Example 2: Search nodes by XPath.