In this example, we will show you tht how to use XPointer in conjunction with XLink to point to a specific part of another document.

We will start by looking at the target XML documents (the document we are going to link to).

The target XML documents is called "dogbreeds.xml" and it lists a few different dog breeds:

Instead of linking to the entire document (as with XLink), XPointer allows you to link to specific part of the document. To link to a specific part of a page, add a number sign (#) and an XPointer expression after the URL in the xlink:href attribute.

The expression: #xpointer(id("Rottweiler")) refer to the element in the target document, with the id value of "Rottweiler".

So the xlink:href attribute would looks like this:
xlink:href="http://dog.com/dogbreeds.xml#xpointer(id('Rottweiler'))"

However, XPointer allows a shorthand form when linking to an element with the id. You can also use the value of the id directly, like this: xlink:href="http://dog.com/dogbreeds.xml#Rottweiler"

The following XML document refer to information of the dog breed for each of my dogs :-), all through XLink and XPointer references: