XPath
XPath (XML Path Language) is a query language used for selecting nodes from an XML document. It provides a way to navigate through elements and attributes in an XML tree structure, enabling precise data extraction and manipulation. XPath is widely used in web scraping, XML processing, and as a component in other technologies like XSLT and XQuery.
Developers should learn XPath when working with XML-based data, such as in web scraping with tools like Selenium or BeautifulSoup, or when processing configuration files, RSS feeds, or SOAP web services. It is essential for tasks requiring targeted data extraction from structured documents, as it offers powerful expressions for filtering and locating specific elements based on attributes, text content, or hierarchical relationships.