I'm trying to parse an existing xml file format that our customer uses for other purposes (so I don't have the option of adjusting what they send to us). It looks like:

<property>
<name>orderType</name>
<value>BULK</value>
</property>
<property>
<name>correlationId</name>
<value>9877414b-c4dc-4ebd-8732-ee094e1dc7b4</value>
</property>
<property>
<name>WIRE_O_BINDING</name>
<value>TRUE</value>
</property>

and so on, with many other name value pairs. My trouble is that I need to parse against the <name> and if I get a match, assign the <value> to the right global variable.

So if I need to know whether or not this is a wire-o-binding job, I need to keep looking through <names> until I find a match for wire_o_binding, then grab the value of TRUE. xmlget works for me if wire_o_binding is always the 3rd name/value pair - but there's no guarantee that will be the case. Any suggestions for how to attack this?

Thanks,
Jim

Not sure where you wan to go with this but here is what you could do:

1. Add an XML Splitter that will split on the node Property
2. Add a Text condition that will look at the field name and compare to WIRE_O_BINDING

On the true branch, setup your global variable with the content of the field value.

It would be easier - and MUCH faster - to use a script and specify the XPATH statement directly, as in this piece of JavaScript code:

You'll have to adjust your XPATH statement according to the actual hierarchy of elements in the XML file. I just wrapped all your elements inside a <root> element for the sake of this example.

Well - the first thing I'm trying to accomplish is to generate a work order derived from the XML. Second will be to retrieve pdfs from urls provided in the xml and send them to the appropriate printer here.

I realize this is more of an xml question than a PlanetPress question. I think ideally I'd like to apply an xslt that would change:

<property>
<name>WIRE_O_BINDING</name>
<value>TRUE</value>
</property>

into

<WIRE_O_BINDING>TRUE</WIRE_O_BINDING>

But due to my lack of xslt/xml expertise I need to find another way. Your suggestion is working and gives me a way to move forward.

Thanks for your help.
Jim

Thanks, Philippe. I have probably 40 items to grab from this xml and will process about 5000 of these over the summer - so speed will matter for me.

I just prototyped 1 value using the splitter and text condition and that worked fine. But your suggestion looks like I could grab all 40 values in 1 swoop - which sounds good to me.

Thanks for adding that suggestion.

Jim

The XSLT idea is a good one on paper... but it might not work with all files.

If the property name contains a value that is not an XML-compliant element name, the XSLT will fail.

For instance:

• <name>WIRE O BINDING</name>
  or
• <name>2PagePrinting</name>

cannot be converted to

• <WIRE O BINDING>TRUE</WIRE O BINDING>
• <2PagePrinting>TRUE</2PagePrinting>

because those are invalid XML element names.

I'm not able to extract the simplest of values from the xml and I'm wondering if it's because I need to address (and how to address) the namespace that's defined in the xml. Actually - xmlget grabs this value for me just fine. I've stepped back from the the name:value pair problem of yesterday and now I'm just trying to return any value from the xml via the javascript solution you suggested yesterday.

The xml begins with:


Working backwards from the code you provided yesterday, I've simplified it just to try and nail down where I'm going wrong. In the code below I've tried calling orderNo in a variety of ways, and I keep getting nothing back. ./order/orderNo, /order/orderNo, order/orderNo, ./orderNo, /orderNo - and probably a couple more variations. In the log I'm getting:

ERROR: W3602 : Error 0 on line 4, column 1: Microsoft JScript runtime error: Type mismatch
ERROR: W3603 : Error running script.
ERROR: Run Script: W1603 : Plugin failed - 11:26:31 (elapsed time: 00:00:00:078)

If I hard code a value in for var valueNode1 = "testvalue";, that gets returned to me correctly, so it seems to be how I'm specifying myXML.selectSingleNode("orderNo"); that's the problem.



Any suggestions on where I'm going wrong with this?

Thanks,
Jim

Yep, the namespace is what's tripping you here: it is defined as a default namespace (i.e. no-prefix) which XPATH cannot handle natively.

In addition, whenever you do manage to retrieve a node, you must use node.text to get its content.

So to bypass the namespace issue, you have to specify that you are specifically looking for a node using its local name as opposed to its namespace name.

The following code should work:

Note that to make it even more explicit, you could also use:


More information about default namespaces and XPATH is available on this Microsoft page: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/data/xml/xpath-queries-and-namespaces