CODEWITHSUNDEEP
xmlpowershellxpath
TOGEEK
TOGEEK

Reputation: 741

Powershell: difficulty returning an xml element

Below is an extract of an xml file

<JobList>
  <Job id="Hotel" start="2016-10-06" /> 
  <Job id="Cleaning" start="2016-10-06" /> 
  <Job id="Floor" start="2016-10-06" /> 
  <Job id="Training" start="2016-10-06" /> 
  <Job id="Meeting" start="2016-10-06" /> 
  <Job id="CI" start="2016-10-06" /> 
<Job titleId="Kitchen Associate" id="Kitchen" start="2016-10-06" rank="18">

In need to return the "titleId" and "start" from the last line.

If I write the following code I can get the titleId, "Kitchen Associate" no problems. 

gc "\\path\fil.xml" | Select-Xml -XPATH "//Job/@start" | select * -expandproperty node | Select titleID

But I can't seem to return the RELATED start date as it will return back all seven of the start dates from the JobList. Is there a way of limiting the results such that it only takes it from where titleID also exists?

Thanks

Upvotes: 0

Views: 41

Answers (2)

Andrey Marchuk
Andrey Marchuk

Reputation: 13483

The problem with your code is that the approach you took is oriented towards getting attributes from different nodes, when you should get the correct node and then select its attribute. You can achieve it with XPath as well:

(gc "e:\1.txt" -Raw | Select-Xml -XPATH "//Job[@titleId]/@start").Node

but here's a more Powershell way of doing this:

$xml = [xml] (gc e:\1.txt -Raw)
$node = $xml.JobList.Job | Where-Object { $_.titleId -ne $null }
$node.start

You first select the correct node based on the titleId attribute and then you have access to all of its attributes.

Keep in mind that there's a chance that there will be more than 1 or no nodes at all that have the required titleId, so you need to check that $node is not null and how many nodes are there.

Upvotes: 1

woxxom
woxxom

Reputation: 73506

Use the correct XPath.

Select-Xml -XPath '//Job[@titleId and @start]' | Select -expand titleId

Upvotes: 1

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