Develop Reference

Determining Java XPATH for multiple Nested Namespaces [duplicate]

How does XPath deal with XML namespaces?
If I use
/IntuitResponse/QueryResponse/Bill/Id
to parse the XML document below I get 0 nodes back.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<IntuitResponse xmlns="http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3"
time="2016-10-14T10:48:39.109-07:00">
<QueryResponse startPosition="1" maxResults="79" totalCount="79">
<Bill domain="QBO" sparse="false">
<Id>=1</Id>
</Bill>
</QueryResponse>
</IntuitResponse>
However, I'm not specifying the namespace in the XPath (i.e. http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3 is not a prefix of each token of the path). How can XPath know which Id I want if I don't tell it explicitly? I suppose in this case (since there is only one namespace) XPath could get away with ignoring the xmlns entirely. But if there are multiple namespaces, things could get ugly.

XPath 1.0/2.0
Defining namespaces in XPath (recommended)
XPath itself doesn't have a way to bind a namespace prefix with a namespace. Such facilities are provided by the hosting library.
It is recommended that you use those facilities and define namespace prefixes that can then be used to qualify XML element and attribute names as necessary.
Here are some of the various mechanisms which XPath hosts provide for specifying namespace prefix bindings to namespace URIs.
(OP's original XPath, /IntuitResponse/QueryResponse/Bill/Id, has been elided to /IntuitResponse/QueryResponse.)
C#:
XmlNamespaceManager nsmgr = new XmlNamespaceManager(doc.NameTable);
nsmgr.AddNamespace("i", "http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3");
XmlNodeList nodes = el.SelectNodes(#"/i:IntuitResponse/i:QueryResponse", nsmgr);
Google Docs:
Unfortunately, IMPORTXML() does not provide a namespace prefix binding mechanism. See next section, Defeating namespaces in XPath, for how to use local-name() as a work-around.
Java (SAX):
NamespaceSupport support = new NamespaceSupport();
support.pushContext();
support.declarePrefix("i", "http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3");
Java (XPath):
xpath.setNamespaceContext(new NamespaceContext() {
public String getNamespaceURI(String prefix) {
switch (prefix) {
case "i": return "http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3";
// ...
}
});
Remember to call
DocumentBuilderFactory.setNamespaceAware(true).
See also:
Java XPath: Queries with default namespace xmlns
JavaScript:
See Implementing a User Defined Namespace Resolver:
function nsResolver(prefix) {
var ns = {
'i' : 'http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3'
};
return ns[prefix] || null;
}
document.evaluate( '/i:IntuitResponse/i:QueryResponse',
document, nsResolver, XPathResult.ANY_TYPE,
null );
Note that if the default namespace has an associated namespace prefix defined, using the nsResolver() returned by Document.createNSResolver() can obviate the need for a customer nsResolver().
Perl (LibXML):
my $xc = XML::LibXML::XPathContext->new($doc);
$xc->registerNs('i', 'http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3');
my #nodes = $xc->findnodes('/i:IntuitResponse/i:QueryResponse');
Python (lxml):
from lxml import etree
f = StringIO('<IntuitResponse>...</IntuitResponse>')
doc = etree.parse(f)
r = doc.xpath('/i:IntuitResponse/i:QueryResponse',
namespaces={'i':'http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3'})
Python (ElementTree):
namespaces = {'i': 'http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3'}
root.findall('/i:IntuitResponse/i:QueryResponse', namespaces)
Python (Scrapy):
response.selector.register_namespace('i', 'http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3')
response.xpath('/i:IntuitResponse/i:QueryResponse').getall()
PhP:
Adapted from #Tomalak's answer using DOMDocument:
$result = new DOMDocument();
$result->loadXML($xml);
$xpath = new DOMXpath($result);
$xpath->registerNamespace("i", "http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3");
$result = $xpath->query("/i:IntuitResponse/i:QueryResponse");
See also #IMSoP's canonical Q/A on PHP SimpleXML namespaces.
Ruby (Nokogiri):
puts doc.xpath('/i:IntuitResponse/i:QueryResponse',
'i' => "http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3")
Note that Nokogiri supports removal of namespaces,
doc.remove_namespaces!
but see the below warnings discouraging the defeating of XML namespaces.
VBA:
xmlNS = "xmlns:i='http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3'"
doc.setProperty "SelectionNamespaces", xmlNS
Set queryResponseElement =doc.SelectSingleNode("/i:IntuitResponse/i:QueryResponse")
VB.NET:
xmlDoc = New XmlDocument()
xmlDoc.Load("file.xml")
nsmgr = New XmlNamespaceManager(New XmlNameTable())
nsmgr.AddNamespace("i", "http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3");
nodes = xmlDoc.DocumentElement.SelectNodes("/i:IntuitResponse/i:QueryResponse",
nsmgr)
SoapUI (doc):
declare namespace i='http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3';
/i:IntuitResponse/i:QueryResponse
xmlstarlet:
-N i="http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3"
XSLT:
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
xmlns:i="http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3">
...
Once you've declared a namespace prefix, your XPath can be written to use it:
/i:IntuitResponse/i:QueryResponse
Defeating namespaces in XPath (not recommended)
An alternative is to write predicates that test against local-name():
/*[local-name()='IntuitResponse']/*[local-name()='QueryResponse']
Or, in XPath 2.0:
/*:IntuitResponse/*:QueryResponse
Skirting namespaces in this manner works but is not recommended because it
Under-specifies the full element/attribute name.
Fails to differentiate between element/attribute names in different
namespaces (the very purpose of namespaces). Note that this concern could be addressed by adding an additional predicate to check the namespace URI explicitly:
/*[ namespace-uri()='http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3'
and local-name()='IntuitResponse']
/*[ namespace-uri()='http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3'
and local-name()='QueryResponse']
Thanks to Daniel Haley for the namespace-uri() note.
Is excessively verbose.
XPath 3.0/3.1
Libraries and tools that support modern XPath 3.0/3.1 allow the specification of a namespace URI directly in an XPath expression:
/Q{http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3}IntuitResponse/Q{http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3}QueryResponse
While Q{http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3} is much more verbose than using an XML namespace prefix, it has the advantage of being independent of the namespace prefix binding mechanism of the hosting library. The Q{} notation is known as Clark Notation after its originator, James Clark. The W3C XPath 3.1 EBNF grammar calls it a BracedURILiteral.
Thanks to Michael Kay for the suggestion to cover XPath 3.0/3.1's BracedURILiteral.

I use /*[name()='...'] in a google sheet to fetch some counts from Wikidata. I have a table like this
thes WD prop links items
NOM P7749 3925 3789
AAT P1014 21157 20224
and the formulas in cols links and items are
=IMPORTXML("https://query.wikidata.org/sparql?query=SELECT(COUNT(*)as?c){?item wdt:"&$B14&"[]}","//*[name()='literal']")
=IMPORTXML("https://query.wikidata.org/sparql?query=SELECT(COUNT(distinct?item)as?c){?item wdt:"&$B14&"[]}","//*[name()='literal']")
respectively. The SPARQL query happens not to have any spaces...
I saw name() used instead of local-name() in Xml Namespace breaking my xpath!, and for some reason //*:literal doesn't work.

XPath application on XML returns empty string [duplicate]

How does XPath deal with XML namespaces?
If I use
/IntuitResponse/QueryResponse/Bill/Id
to parse the XML document below I get 0 nodes back.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<IntuitResponse xmlns="http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3"
time="2016-10-14T10:48:39.109-07:00">
<QueryResponse startPosition="1" maxResults="79" totalCount="79">
<Bill domain="QBO" sparse="false">
<Id>=1</Id>
</Bill>
</QueryResponse>
</IntuitResponse>
However, I'm not specifying the namespace in the XPath (i.e. http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3 is not a prefix of each token of the path). How can XPath know which Id I want if I don't tell it explicitly? I suppose in this case (since there is only one namespace) XPath could get away with ignoring the xmlns entirely. But if there are multiple namespaces, things could get ugly.

XPath 1.0/2.0
Defining namespaces in XPath (recommended)
XPath itself doesn't have a way to bind a namespace prefix with a namespace. Such facilities are provided by the hosting library.
It is recommended that you use those facilities and define namespace prefixes that can then be used to qualify XML element and attribute names as necessary.
Here are some of the various mechanisms which XPath hosts provide for specifying namespace prefix bindings to namespace URIs.
(OP's original XPath, /IntuitResponse/QueryResponse/Bill/Id, has been elided to /IntuitResponse/QueryResponse.)
C#:
XmlNamespaceManager nsmgr = new XmlNamespaceManager(doc.NameTable);
nsmgr.AddNamespace("i", "http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3");
XmlNodeList nodes = el.SelectNodes(#"/i:IntuitResponse/i:QueryResponse", nsmgr);
Google Docs:
Unfortunately, IMPORTXML() does not provide a namespace prefix binding mechanism. See next section, Defeating namespaces in XPath, for how to use local-name() as a work-around.
Java (SAX):
NamespaceSupport support = new NamespaceSupport();
support.pushContext();
support.declarePrefix("i", "http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3");
Java (XPath):
xpath.setNamespaceContext(new NamespaceContext() {
public String getNamespaceURI(String prefix) {
switch (prefix) {
case "i": return "http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3";
// ...
}
});
Remember to call
DocumentBuilderFactory.setNamespaceAware(true).
See also:
Java XPath: Queries with default namespace xmlns
JavaScript:
See Implementing a User Defined Namespace Resolver:
function nsResolver(prefix) {
var ns = {
'i' : 'http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3'
};
return ns[prefix] || null;
}
document.evaluate( '/i:IntuitResponse/i:QueryResponse',
document, nsResolver, XPathResult.ANY_TYPE,
null );
Note that if the default namespace has an associated namespace prefix defined, using the nsResolver() returned by Document.createNSResolver() can obviate the need for a customer nsResolver().
Perl (LibXML):
my $xc = XML::LibXML::XPathContext->new($doc);
$xc->registerNs('i', 'http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3');
my #nodes = $xc->findnodes('/i:IntuitResponse/i:QueryResponse');
Python (lxml):
from lxml import etree
f = StringIO('<IntuitResponse>...</IntuitResponse>')
doc = etree.parse(f)
r = doc.xpath('/i:IntuitResponse/i:QueryResponse',
namespaces={'i':'http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3'})
Python (ElementTree):
namespaces = {'i': 'http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3'}
root.findall('/i:IntuitResponse/i:QueryResponse', namespaces)
Python (Scrapy):
response.selector.register_namespace('i', 'http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3')
response.xpath('/i:IntuitResponse/i:QueryResponse').getall()
PhP:
Adapted from #Tomalak's answer using DOMDocument:
$result = new DOMDocument();
$result->loadXML($xml);
$xpath = new DOMXpath($result);
$xpath->registerNamespace("i", "http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3");
$result = $xpath->query("/i:IntuitResponse/i:QueryResponse");
See also #IMSoP's canonical Q/A on PHP SimpleXML namespaces.
Ruby (Nokogiri):
puts doc.xpath('/i:IntuitResponse/i:QueryResponse',
'i' => "http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3")
Note that Nokogiri supports removal of namespaces,
doc.remove_namespaces!
but see the below warnings discouraging the defeating of XML namespaces.
VBA:
xmlNS = "xmlns:i='http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3'"
doc.setProperty "SelectionNamespaces", xmlNS
Set queryResponseElement =doc.SelectSingleNode("/i:IntuitResponse/i:QueryResponse")
VB.NET:
xmlDoc = New XmlDocument()
xmlDoc.Load("file.xml")
nsmgr = New XmlNamespaceManager(New XmlNameTable())
nsmgr.AddNamespace("i", "http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3");
nodes = xmlDoc.DocumentElement.SelectNodes("/i:IntuitResponse/i:QueryResponse",
nsmgr)
SoapUI (doc):
declare namespace i='http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3';
/i:IntuitResponse/i:QueryResponse
xmlstarlet:
-N i="http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3"
XSLT:
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
xmlns:i="http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3">
...
Once you've declared a namespace prefix, your XPath can be written to use it:
/i:IntuitResponse/i:QueryResponse
Defeating namespaces in XPath (not recommended)
An alternative is to write predicates that test against local-name():
/*[local-name()='IntuitResponse']/*[local-name()='QueryResponse']
Or, in XPath 2.0:
/*:IntuitResponse/*:QueryResponse
Skirting namespaces in this manner works but is not recommended because it
Under-specifies the full element/attribute name.
Fails to differentiate between element/attribute names in different
namespaces (the very purpose of namespaces). Note that this concern could be addressed by adding an additional predicate to check the namespace URI explicitly:
/*[ namespace-uri()='http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3'
and local-name()='IntuitResponse']
/*[ namespace-uri()='http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3'
and local-name()='QueryResponse']
Thanks to Daniel Haley for the namespace-uri() note.
Is excessively verbose.
XPath 3.0/3.1
Libraries and tools that support modern XPath 3.0/3.1 allow the specification of a namespace URI directly in an XPath expression:
/Q{http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3}IntuitResponse/Q{http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3}QueryResponse
While Q{http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3} is much more verbose than using an XML namespace prefix, it has the advantage of being independent of the namespace prefix binding mechanism of the hosting library. The Q{} notation is known as Clark Notation after its originator, James Clark. The W3C XPath 3.1 EBNF grammar calls it a BracedURILiteral.
Thanks to Michael Kay for the suggestion to cover XPath 3.0/3.1's BracedURILiteral.

I use /*[name()='...'] in a google sheet to fetch some counts from Wikidata. I have a table like this
thes WD prop links items
NOM P7749 3925 3789
AAT P1014 21157 20224
and the formulas in cols links and items are
=IMPORTXML("https://query.wikidata.org/sparql?query=SELECT(COUNT(*)as?c){?item wdt:"&$B14&"[]}","//*[name()='literal']")
=IMPORTXML("https://query.wikidata.org/sparql?query=SELECT(COUNT(distinct?item)as?c){?item wdt:"&$B14&"[]}","//*[name()='literal']")
respectively. The SPARQL query happens not to have any spaces...
I saw name() used instead of local-name() in Xml Namespace breaking my xpath!, and for some reason //*:literal doesn't work.

XpathException in Java MAVEN example Expression uses unbound namespace prefix

After researching on google I have not find a working solution for this.
The 'MAVEN by Example' ebook uses the Yahoo weather example. Unfortunately it looks like Yahoo changed their interface. I tried to adapt the java code for this, but get this annoying exception:
exec-maven-plugin:1.5.0:java
Failed to execute goal org.codehaus.mojo:exec-maven-plugin:1.5.0:java
Caused by: org.dom4j.XPathException:
Exception occurred evaluting XPath: /query/results/channel/yweather:location/#city.
Exception: XPath expression uses unbound namespace prefix yweather
The xml line itself is:
<query xmlns:yahoo="http://www.yahooapis.com/v1/base.rng" yahoo:count="1" yahoo:created="2017-02-13T10:57:34Z" yahoo:lang="en-US">
<results>
<channel>
...
<yweather:location xmlns:yweather="http://xml.weather.yahoo.com/ns/rss/1.0" city="Theale" country="United Kingdom" region=" England"/>
The entire XML can be generated from :
https://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select%20*%20from%20weather.forecast%20where%20woeid%3D91731537
My code (as per the 'MAVEN By Example' ebook, xpath and url modified for the changed Yahoo):
public Weather parse(InputStream inputStream) throws Exception {
Weather weather = new Weather();
SAXReader xmlReader = createXmlReader();
Document doc = xmlReader.read( inputStream );
weather.setCity(doc.valueOf ("//yweather:location/#city") );
// and several more, such as setCountry, setTemp
}
(I'm not an xpath expert, so I tried
/query/results/channel/item/yweather:location/#city
as well, just in case, with the same result.
xmlReader:
public InputStream retrieve(String woeid) throws Exception {
String url = "https://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select%20*%20from%20weather.forecast%20where%20woeid%3D"+woeid; // eg 91731537
URLConnection conn = new URL(url).openConnection();
return conn.getInputStream();
}
and the weather class is just a set of getters and setters
When I try this in this XML tester, it works just fine, but that may be the effect of XPATH-v2 vs Java's v1.

When you evaluate your XPath //yweather:location/#city, the XPath processor has no knowledge of which namespace the yweather prefix is bound to. You'll need to provide that information. Now, you might think "the info is right there in the document!" and you'd be right. But prefixes are just a sort of stand-in (like a variable) for the actual namespace. A namespace can be bound to any prefix you like that follows the prefix naming rules, and can be bound to multiple prefixes as well. Just like the variable name in Java referring to an object is of itself of no importance, and multiple variables could refer to the same object.
For example, if you used XPath //yw:location/#city with the prefix yw bound to namespace http://xml.weather.yahoo.com/ns/rss/1.0, it'd still work the same.
I suggest you use class org.dom4j.xpath.DefaultXPath instead of calling valueOf. Create an instance of it and initialize the namespace context. There's a method setNamespaceURIs that takes a Map from prefixes to namespaces and lets you make the bindings. Bind the above weather namespace (the actual URI) to some prefix of your choosing (may be yweather, but can be anything else you want to use in your actual XPath expression) and then use the instance to evaluate it over the document.
Here's an answer I gave to some question that goes more in-depth about what namespaces and their prefixes really are: https://stackoverflow.com/a/8231272/630136
EDIT: the online XPath tester you used probably does some behind-the-scenes magic to extract the namespaces and their prefixes from the given document and bind those in the XPath processor.
If you look at their sample XML and adjust it like this...
<root xmlns:foo="http://www.foo.org/" xmlns:bar="http://www.bar.org">
<actors>
<actor id="1">Christian Bale</actor>
<actor id="2">Liam Neeson</actor>
<actor id="3">Michael Caine</actor>
</actors>
<foo:singers xmlns:test="http://www.foo.org/">
<test:singer id="4">Tom Waits</test:singer>
<foo:singer id="5">B.B. King</foo:singer>
<foo:singer id="6">Ray Charles</foo:singer>
</foo:singers>
</root>
the XML is semantically equivalent, because the test prefix is bound to the same namespace as foo. The XPath //foo:singer/#id still returns all the right results, so the tool is smart about it. However, it doesn't know what to do with XML...
<root xmlns:foo="http://www.foo.org/" xmlns:bar="http://www.bar.org">
<actors>
<foo:actor id="1">Christian Bale</foo:actor>
<actor id="2">Liam Neeson</actor>
<actor id="3">Michael Caine</actor>
</actors>
<foo:singers xmlns:test="http://www.foo.org/" xmlns:foo="http://www.bar.org">
<test:singer id="4">Tom Waits</test:singer>
<foo:singer id="5">B.B. King</foo:singer>
<foo:singer id="6">Ray Charles</foo:singer>
</foo:singers>
</root>
and XPath //foo:*/#id. The prefix foo is bound to a different namespace in the singers element scope, and now it only returns the ids 5 and 6. Contrast it with this XPath, that doesn't use a prefix but the namespace-uri() function: //*[namespace-uri()='http://www.foo.org/']/#id
That last one returns ids 1 and 4, as expected.

I found the error, it's my unfamiliarity with namespaces. The 'createXmlReader()'
used in my example above is a method that sets the correct namespace, except that I forgot to change it after Yahoo changed the xml. Careful re-reading the Maven-by-example documentation, the generated error, and comparing with the detailed answer given here, it suddenly clicked. The updated code (for the benefit of anyone trying the same example):
private SAXReader createXmlReader() {
Map<String,String> uris = new HashMap<String,String>();
uris.put( "yweather", "http://xml.weather.yahoo.com/ns/rss/1.0" );
DocumentFactory factory = new DocumentFactory();
factory.setXPathNamespaceURIs( uris );
SAXReader xmlReader = new SAXReader();
xmlReader.setDocumentFactory( factory );
return xmlReader;
}
The only change is in the line 'uris.put()'
Originally the namespace was "y", now it is "yweather".

Xpath and namespace, select node iterator

I have this kind of XML:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<documentAnswer xmlns="http://schemas.pkh.hr/doc/2013/documents/rda_30" domainName="rda" domainVersion="3.0">
<answerTimestamp>2013-08-21T13:35:25.894</answerTimestamp>
<correct>
<docId>RDA2_29F81D27-1409BE49E2E-7FF8</docId>
<attachments>
<attachment>
<format>application/pdf</foraat>
<generatedType>StampanNaBlanko</generatedType>
<encodedPdf>JVBERiYKJSVFT0YK</encodedPdf>
</attachment>
</attachments>
</correct>
Those attachment tags can be one or more. I am trying to get NodeIterator of attachment tags in java using
XPathAPI.selectNodeIterator(node,
"/documentAnswer/correct/attachments/attachment")
and then iterate, but I am not succeeding. I am guessing that problem is in xpath and that it is related to namespace, but don't know how to solve it. I tried with this kind of xpath but no success:
XPathAPI.selectNodeIterator(node,
"/rda:documentAnswer/correct/attachments/attachment", "rda",
"http://schemas.pkh.hr/doc/2013/documents/rda_30")

/rda:documentAnswer/correct/attachments/attachment
Here you are assigning the rda namespace only to the root element, but it is declared in the XML as the default namespace. Therefore, all your elements are in that namespace. You must use
/rda:documentAnswer/rda:correct/rda:attachments/rda:attachment
Unfortunately, the XPath standard does not support the declaration of a default namespace.

3 kind of approach :
A-Embed namespace for query QNames and not only local-names()
with corrected header :
<ns0:documentAnswer xmlns:ns0="http://schemas.pkh.hr/doc/2013/documents/rda_30" domainName="rda" domainVersion="3.0">
xpath
/ns0:documentAnswer
B-Query only local-names with local-name() function
/*[local-name()="documentAnswer"]
C-Query local-names and namespaces (querying QNames)
/*[local-name()="documentAnswer" and namespace-uri()='http://schemas.pkh.hr/doc/2013/documents/rda_30']
see http://nealwalters.blogspot.fr/2005/01/common-xpath-examples-questions-issues.html

If you prefer you can get it ignoring the namespaces this way:
/*:documentAnswer/*:correct/*:attachments/*:attachment

Default XML namespace, JDOM, and XPath

I want to use JDOM to read in an XML file, then use XPath to extract data from the JDOM Document. It creates the Document object fine, but when I use XPath to query the Document for a List of elements, I get nothing.
My XML document has a default namespace defined in the root element. The funny thing is, when I remove the default namespace, it successfully runs the XPath query and returns the elements I want. What else must I do to get my XPath query to return results?
XML:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<collection xmlns="http://www.foo.com">
<dvd id="A">
<title>Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring</title>
<length>178</length>
<actor>Ian Holm</actor>
<actor>Elijah Wood</actor>
<actor>Ian McKellen</actor>
</dvd>
<dvd id="B">
<title>The Matrix</title>
<length>136</length>
<actor>Keanu Reeves</actor>
<actor>Laurence Fishburne</actor>
</dvd>
</collection>
Java:
public static void main(String args[]) throws Exception {
SAXBuilder builder = new SAXBuilder();
Document d = builder.build("xpath.xml");
XPath xpath = XPath.newInstance("collection/dvd");
xpath.addNamespace(d.getRootElement().getNamespace());
System.out.println(xpath.selectNodes(d));
}

XPath 1.0 doesn't support the concept of a default namespace (XPath 2.0 does).
Any unprefixed tag is always assumed to be part of the no-name namespace.
When using XPath 1.0 you need something like this:
public static void main(String args[]) throws Exception {
SAXBuilder builder = new SAXBuilder();
Document d = builder.build("xpath.xml");
XPath xpath = XPath.newInstance("x:collection/x:dvd");
xpath.addNamespace("x", d.getRootElement().getNamespaceURI());
System.out.println(xpath.selectNodes(d));
}

I had a similiar problem, but mine was that I had a mixture of XML inputs, some of which had a namespace defined and others that didn't. To simplify my problem I ran the following JDOM snippet after loading the document.
for (Element el : doc.getRootElement().getDescendants(new ElementFilter())) {
if (el.getNamespace() != null) el.setNamespace(null);
}
After removing all the namespaces I was able to use simple getChild("elname") style navigation or simple XPath queries.
I wouldn't recommend this technique as a general solution, but in my case it was definitely useful.

You can also do the following
/*[local-name() = 'collection']/*[local-name() = 'dvd']/
Here is list of useful xpath queries.