CODEWITHSUNDEEP
xmlpowershell
Jason
Jason

Reputation: 23

Import xml elements into powershell variables

I've figured out how to import an xml file into a Powershell variable using the [xml] tag before the variable and Get-Content, but filling every variable in Powershell from that new xml-formatted variable one at a time is painstaking.

$variable = $xml.vars.Linux.variable1
$variable2 = $xml.vars.Linux.variable2

... and so on.

Is there a shorter/faster way to just import that xml file and set Powershell variables that match the Node names and fill those variables with the associated Node values? So I don't have to specifically fill every Powershell value with it's corresponding named xml Node, I can just use the Powershell variables without lines of code filling them?

I suspect I may need a loop of some sort...current xml structure is 3 layers with category name for second layer Node and then variable names for Nodes within. For example:

<vars>
 <Windows>
  <Hostname>Contoso</Hostname>
  <IP_Address>192.168.1.1</IP_Address>
 </Windows>
 <Linux>
  <variable1>Yup</variable1>
  <variable2>Yessir</variable2>
 </Linux>
</vars>

Thanks!

Upvotes: 2

Views: 2378

Answers (3)

zdan
zdan

Reputation: 29450

You can create a variable for each element under a particular node like this:

$xml.vars.Linux.ChildNodes | %{ New-Variable -Name $_.Name -Value $_.InnerText -PassThru}

You can remove the -PassThru switch to avoid outputting the variables onto the pipeline.

Upvotes: 2

Jason Snell
Jason Snell

Reputation: 1465

You can access xml nodes really easily in Powershell using xpath. Example: 

$myNode = $xmlDoc.SelectSingleNode("//Linux")

From there you can append additional elements on to the node.

First create a new Element

$child = $xmlDoc.CreateElement("NewElementName")

Second add the value to the new child Element

$Child.InnerXML = "ValueHere"

Then Append the child element to the node you have selected

$myNode.AppendChild($child)

This can easily be done in a loop and you'll be working directly with the xml object instead of converting it.

Upvotes: 1

Luisrorta
Luisrorta

Reputation: 159

Is the goal to turn the xml data into powershell objects you can call elsewhere? Would something like this work for you?

foreach ($var in $variable.linux){
                        $properties = @{'variable1'=$var.variable1
                                        'variable2'=$var.variable2}
$obj = New-Object -TypeName PSObject -Property $properties -ErrorAction Stop
Write-Output $obj}

Upvotes: 1

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