XPointer

---

title: "XPointer" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["world-wide-web-consortium-standards", "xml-data-access"] description: "System for addressing components of XML-based Internet media" topic_path: "general/world-wide-web-consortium-standards" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XPointer" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary System for addressing components of XML-based Internet media ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox technology standard"]

Field	Value
title	XPointer
long_name	XPointer Framework
native_name	XPointer Framework
native_name_lang	en
status	W3C Recommendation
year_started
first_published
version	XPointer Framework Recommendation
version_date
organization	W3C
committee	W3C XML Linking Working Group
editors	{{Plainlist
}}<ref name	"W3C-xptr-framework" /
base_standards	XML, XPath
website
::

| title = XPointer | long_name = XPointer Framework | native_name = XPointer Framework | native_name_lang = en | status = W3C Recommendation | year_started = | first_published = | version = XPointer Framework Recommendation | version_date = | organization = W3C | committee = W3C XML Linking Working Group | editors = {{Plainlist|

• Paul Grosso
• Eve Maler
• Jonathan Marsh
• Norman Walsh | authors = | base_standards = XML, XPath | related_standards = | abbreviation = | domain = | license = | website =

XPointer is a system for addressing components of XML-based Internet media. It is divided among four specifications: a "framework" that forms the basis for identifying XML fragments, a positional element addressing scheme, a scheme for namespaces, and a scheme for XPath-based addressing. XPointer Framework is a W3C recommendation since March 2003.

The XPointer language is designed to address structural aspects of XML, including text content and other information objects created as a result of parsing the document. Thus, it could be used to point to a section of a document highlighted by a user through a mouse drag action.

During development, and until 2016, XPointer was covered by a royalty-free technology patent held by Sun Microsystems.

Positional element addressing

The element() scheme introduces positional addressing of child elements. This is similar to a simple XPath address, but subsequent steps can only be numbers representing the position of a descendant relative to its branch on the tree.

For instance, given the following fragment:

::code[lang=xml] ::

results as the following examples:

xpointer(id("foo")) = foobar xpointer(/foobar/1) = bar xpointer(//bom) = bom (a=1), bom (a=2) element(/1/2/1) = bom (a=1) (/1 descend into first element (foobar), /2 descend into second child element (baz), /1 select first child element (bom))

References

References

1. (n.d.). "XPointer Framework Publication History - W3C".
2. (1997-04-06). "Extensible Markup Language (XML): Part 2. Linking Version 1.0".
3. "XPointer Framework". W3C.
4. (2000). "W3C XML Pointer, XML Base and XML Linking".
5. "The XML and Semantic Web Worlds: Technologies, Interoperability and Integration. A survey of the State of the Art".
6. (2002-06-10). "XPointer Patent Statements".
7. "XPointer element() Scheme". W3C.

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::