//book[author="Neal Stephenson"]/title

        ArrayList result = new ArrayList();
        NodeList books = doc.getElementsByTagName("book");
        for (int i = 0; i < books.getLength(); i++) {
            Element book = (Element) books.item(i);
            NodeList authors = book.getElementsByTagName("author");
            boolean stephenson = false;
            for (int j = 0; j < authors.getLength(); j++) {
                Element author = (Element) authors.item(j);
                NodeList children = author.getChildNodes();
                StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();
                for (int k = 0; k < children.getLength(); k++) {
                    Node child = children.item(k);
                    // really should to do this recursively
                    if (child.getNodeType() == Node.TEXT_NODE) {
                        sb.append(child.getNodeValue());
                    }
                }
                if (sb.toString().equals("Neal Stephenson")) {
                    stephenson = true;
                    break;
                }

            }

            if (stephenson) {
                NodeList titles = book.getElementsByTagName("title");
                for (int j = 0; j < titles.getLength(); j++) {
                    result.add(titles.item(j));
                }
            }

        }

<inventory>
    <book year="2000">
        <title>Snow Crash</title>
        <author>Neal Stephenson</author>
        <publisher>Spectra</publisher>
        <isbn>0553380958</isbn>
        <price>14.95</price>
    </book>
 
    <book year="2005">
        <title>Burning Tower</title>
        <author>Larry Niven</author>
        <author>Jerry Pournelle</author>
        <publisher>Pocket</publisher>
        <isbn>0743416910</isbn>
        <price>5.99</price>
    <book>
 
    <book year="1995">
        <title>Zodiac</title>
        <author>Neal Stephenson<author>
        <publisher>Spectra</publisher>
        <isbn>0553573862</isbn>
        <price>7.50</price>
    <book>

    <!-- more books... -->
 
</inventory>

        DocumentBuilderFactory factory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
        factory.setNamespaceAware(true); // never forget this!
        DocumentBuilder builder = factory.newDocumentBuilder();
        Document doc = builder.parse("books.xml");

XPathFactory factory = XPathFactory.newInstance();

XPath xpath = factory.newXPath();

PathExpression expr = xpath.compile("//book[author='Neal Stephenson']/title/text()");

Object result = expr.evaluate(doc, XPathConstants.NODESET);

        NodeList nodes = (NodeList) result;
        for (int i = 0; i < nodes.getLength(); i++) {
            System.out.println(nodes.item(i).getNodeValue()); 
        }

import java.io.IOException;
import org.w3c.dom.*;
import org.xml.sax.SAXException;
import javax.xml.parsers.*;
import javax.xml.xpath.*;

public class XPathExample {

  public static void main(String[] args) 
   throws ParserConfigurationException, SAXException, 
          IOException, XPathExpressionException {

    DocumentBuilderFactory domFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
    domFactory.setNamespaceAware(true); // never forget this!
    DocumentBuilder builder = domFactory.newDocumentBuilder();
    Document doc = builder.parse("books.xml");

    XPathFactory factory = XPathFactory.newInstance();
    XPath xpath = factory.newXPath();
    XPathExpression expr 
     = xpath.compile("//book[author='Neal Stephenson']/title/text()");

    Object result = expr.evaluate(doc, XPathConstants.NODESET);
    NodeList nodes = (NodeList) result;
    for (int i = 0; i < nodes.getLength(); i++) {
        System.out.println(nodes.item(i).getNodeValue()); 
    }

  }

}

<inventory xmlns="http://www.example.com/books">
    <book year="2000">
        <title>Snow Crash</title>
        <author>Neal Stephenson</author>
        <publisher>Spectra</publisher>
        <isbn>0553380958</isbn>
        <price>14.95<price>
    </book>

    <!-- more books... -->

<inventory>

import java.util.Iterator;
import javax.xml.*;
import javax.xml.namespace.NamespaceContext;

public class PersonalNamespaceContext implements NamespaceContext {

    public String getNamespaceURI(String prefix) {
        if (prefix == null) throw new NullPointerException("Null prefix");
        else if ("pre".equals(prefix)) return "http://www.example.org/books";
        else if ("xml".equals(prefix)) return XMLConstants.XML_NS_URI;
        return XMLConstants.NULL_NS_URI;
    }

    // This method isn't necessary for XPath processing.
    public String getPrefix(String uri) {
        throw new UnsupportedOperationException();
    }

    // This method isn't necessary for XPath processing either.
    public Iterator getPrefixes(String uri) {
        throw new UnsupportedOperationException();
    }

}

  XPathFactory factory = XPathFactory.newInstance();
  XPath xpath = factory.newXPath();
  xpath.setNamespaceContext(new PersonalNamespaceContext());
  XPathExpression expr 
    = xpath.compile("//pre:book[pre:author='Neal Stephenson']/pre:title/text()");

  Object result = expr.evaluate(doc, XPathConstants.NODESET);
  NodeList nodes = (NodeList) result;
  for (int i = 0; i < nodes.getLength(); i++) {
      System.out.println(nodes.item(i).getNodeValue()); 
  }

public Object evaluate(List args) throws XPathFunctionException

import java.util.List;
import javax.xml.xpath.*;
import org.w3c.dom.*;

public class ISBNValidator implements XPathFunction {

  // This class could easily be implemented as a Singleton.
    
  public Object evaluate(List args) throws XPathFunctionException {

    if (args.size() != 1) {
      throw new XPathFunctionException("Wrong number of arguments to valid-isbn()");
    }

    String isbn;
    Object o = args.get(0);

    // perform conversions
    if (o instanceof String) isbn = (String) args.get(0);
    else if (o instanceof Boolean) isbn = o.toString();
    else if (o instanceof Double) isbn = o.toString();
    else if (o instanceof NodeList) {
        NodeList list = (NodeList) o;
        Node node = list.item(0);
        // getTextContent is available in Java 5 and DOM 3.
        // In Java 1.4 and DOM 2, you'd need to recursively 
        // accumulate the content.
        isbn= node.getTextContent();
    }
    else {
        throw new XPathFunctionException("Could not convert argument type");
    }

    char[] data = isbn.toCharArray();
    if (data.length != 10) return Boolean.FALSE;
    int checksum = 0;
    for (int i = 0; i < 9; i++) {
        checksum += (i+1) * (data[i]-'0');
    }
    int checkdigit = checksum % 11;

    if (checkdigit + '0' == data[9] || (data[9] == 'X' && checkdigit == 10)) {
        return Boolean.TRUE;
    }
    return Boolean.FALSE;

  }

}

iimport javax.xml.namespace.QName;
import javax.xml.xpath.*;

public class ISBNFunctionContext implements XPathFunctionResolver {

  private static final QName name 
   = new QName("http://www.example.org/books", "valid-isbn");

  public XPathFunction resolveFunction(QName name, int arity) {
      if (name.equals(ISBNFunctionContext.name) && arity == 1) {
          return new ISBNValidator();
      }
      return null;
  }

}