Document: createExpression() method

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.

This method compiles an XPathExpression which can then be used for (repeated) evaluations.

You must call this method on the same document that you run the expression against.

Syntax

js
createExpression(xpathText, namespaceURLMapper)

Parameters

xpathText

A string which is the XPath expression to be compiled.

namespaceURLMapper

A function which maps a namespace prefix to a namespace URL (or null if none needed).

Return value

XPathExpression

Examples

js
const xpathExpr = document.createExpression("//div");
const xpathResult = xpathExpr.evaluate(document); // returns an XPathResult object
const nodeContext = document.querySelector("nav");
// Re-using the XPathExpression "xpathExpr"
const otherResult = xpathExpr.evaluate(nodeContext); // returns an XPathResult object

Specifications

Specification
DOM
# dom-xpathevaluatorbase-createexpression

Browser compatibility

See also