parse methods should be short for: def fac = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance() def builder = fac.newDocumentBuilder() def doc = builder.parse(new FileInputStream('filename')) def root = doc.documentElement Node.xpath should be short for org.apache.xpath.XPathAPI.eval(node, 'xpath') Not sure whether we should also overload get and/or getAt[] with xpath meaning, since that will conflict with current element/attribute access