diff --git a/src/main/java/eu/transkribus/core/util/xpath/XPathUtils.java b/src/main/java/eu/transkribus/core/util/xpath/XPathUtils.java
@@ -0,0 +1,33 @@
+package eu.transkribus.core.util.xpath;
+
+import java.io.IOException;
+import java.net.URL;
+
+import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder;
+import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;
+import javax.xml.parsers.ParserConfigurationException;
+
+import org.w3c.dom.Document;
+import org.w3c.dom.Node;
+import org.w3c.dom.NodeList;
+import org.xml.sax.SAXException;
+
+public class XPathUtils {
+
+	public static Document parseDocument(DocumentBuilderFactory factory, URL xmlFile) throws ParserConfigurationException, SAXException, IOException {
+		DocumentBuilder builder = factory.newDocumentBuilder();
+
+		return builder.parse(xmlFile.openStream());
+	}
+
+	public static String getNodeListText(NodeList list) {
+		String txt = "";
+		for (int i = 0; i < list.getLength(); i++) {
+		    Node node = list.item(i);
+		    txt += node.getTextContent();
+		}
+
+		return txt;
+	}
+
+}