XPath MCP server for AI agents

The XPath MCP Server allows you to execute XPath queries on XML content directly from Claude. This Model Context Protocol (MCP) server provides tools for querying both local XML strings and remote XML/HTML content via URLs.

Installation

Using Smithery

The easiest way to install the XPath MCP server is via Smithery:

npx -y @smithery/cli install @thirdstrandstudio/mcp-xpath --client claude

Manual Installation

If you prefer to install manually:

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Build the package
npm run build

Configuration

Setting Up with Claude Desktop

To use the XPath MCP server with Claude Desktop, you need to modify your claude_desktop_config.json file.

Using npx (Recommended)

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "xpath": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "@thirdstrandstudio/mcp-xpath"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Using Direct Node.js Path

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "xpath": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": [
        "/path/to/mcp-xpath/dist/index.js"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Be sure to replace /path/to/mcp-xpath with the actual installation path.

Available Tools

xpath

This tool executes XPath queries on XML content provided as a string.

Parameters:

xml (string): The XML content to query
query (string): The XPath query to execute
mimeType (optional, string): The MIME type (e.g., text/xml, application/xml, text/html, application/xhtml+xml)

xpathwithurl

This tool fetches content from a URL and then executes an XPath query on it.

Parameters:

url (string): The URL to fetch XML/HTML content from
query (string): The XPath query to execute
mimeType (optional, string): The MIME type (e.g., text/xml, application/xml, text/html, application/xhtml+xml)

Usage Examples

Querying XML Content

To extract text from all <item> elements in an XML string:

const result = await callTool("xpath", {
  xml: "<root><item>value1</item><item>value2</item></root>",
  query: "//item/text()",
  mimeType: "text/xml"
});

Querying HTML Content

To extract all links from an HTML string:

const result = await callTool("xpath", {
  xml: "<html><body><a href='link1.html'>Link 1</a><a href='link2.html'>Link 2</a></body></html>",
  query: "//a/@href",
  mimeType: "text/html"
});

Querying Content from a URL

To extract all links from a website:

const result = await callTool("xpathwithurl", {
  url: "https://example.com",
  query: "//a/@href",
  mimeType: "text/html"
});

This will fetch the content from example.com and execute the XPath query to extract all href attributes from anchor tags.

How to install this MCP server

For Claude Code

To add this MCP server to Claude Code, run this command in your terminal:

claude mcp add-json "xpath" '{"command":"npx","args":["@thirdstrandstudio/mcp-xpath"]}'

See the official Claude Code MCP documentation for more details.

For Cursor

There are two ways to add an MCP server to Cursor. The most common way is to add the server globally in the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file so that it is available in all of your projects.

If you only need the server in a single project, you can add it to the project instead by creating or adding it to the .cursor/mcp.json file.

Adding an MCP server to Cursor globally

To add a global MCP server go to Cursor Settings > Tools & Integrations and click "New MCP Server".

When you click that button the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file will be opened and you can add your server like this:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "xpath": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": [
                "@thirdstrandstudio/mcp-xpath"
            ]
        }
    }
}

Adding an MCP server to a project

To add an MCP server to a project you can create a new .cursor/mcp.json file or add it to the existing one. This will look exactly the same as the global MCP server example above.

How to use the MCP server

Once the server is installed, you might need to head back to Settings > MCP and click the refresh button.

The Cursor agent will then be able to see the available tools the added MCP server has available and will call them when it needs to.

You can also explicitly ask the agent to use the tool by mentioning the tool name and describing what the function does.

For Claude Desktop

To add this MCP server to Claude Desktop:

1. Find your configuration file:

macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json
Linux: ~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

2. Add this to your configuration file:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "xpath": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": [
                "@thirdstrandstudio/mcp-xpath"
            ]
        }
    }
}

3. Restart Claude Desktop for the changes to take effect