Parsing an xml Document

Getting Started
1

Hi people.
I’ve been messing about for a good while now and being blocked by something that must be really elementary, but that I"m not seeing :frowning:. I’m trying to parse an xml file structured as follows:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no" ?>
<TheRoot>
  <MessageHeader>
    <MessageId>20240602012345</MessageId>
    <MessageSender>
      <PartyID>1234</PartyID>
      <PartyName>My Company Name</PartyName>
    </MessageSender>
    <MessageRecipient>Recepient Name</MessageRecipient>
  </MessageHeader>
  <MessageDates>
    <StartDate>2024-06-02</StartDate>
    <EndDate>2024-06-02</EndDate>
  </MessageDates>
  <Entry1>
    <UserId>01234567890123</UserId>
    <EntryId>
      <Eno>ABC0123456</Eno>
    </EntryId>
    <Title>This is the Title</Title>
  </Entry1>
  <Comment>Some sort of comment</Comment>
  <NumberOfEntries>1</NumberOfEntries>
</TheRoot>

There’s only 1 “Entry” (Entry1) in my example, but in practice there could be dozens! I will be using loops and all to deal with those, but my problem is to access a given value, for instance, If I want to read Entry1/Eno, I would hope to get “ABC0123456”.
I do something like:

Var nodeIwant As XmlNode = xml.DocumentElement.Child(2).Child(1).Child(0)
Var txt As Variant = nodeIwant.Value
MessageBox nodeIwant.ToString

I get ABC0123456 with the tags, not just the text.
What am I doing wrong ? I’ve messes about with all sorts of combinations, but I’m not getting it.
Can someone there help me please ? Thanks in advance.

2

Please don’t just hard code Child() calls like this.

Best may be XPath query. Or write loops to check node by name.
See XQL function for the query.

2 Likes
3 
Var xml As New XMLDocument
xml.LoadXML(textXML.Text)
Var nodeIwant As XmlNode = xml.DocumentElement.Child(2).Child(1).Child(0)
If nodeIwant.FirstChild IsA XMLTextNode Then
  System.DebugLog "nodeIwant.FirstChild IsA XMLTextNode"
End If
Var txtNode As XMLTextNode = XMLTextNode(nodeIwant.FirstChild) 
Break
MessageBox txtNode.Value

press play after break,
a break point is useful to see the object properties in debug window.

4

I may add more from the answer Norman suggested:

Dont try & parse it manually

Use an XPath query (at least)

http://xpather.com/

try Path

/TheRoot/Entry1/EntryId/Eno

I’d suggest

  1. get the NumberOfEntries
  2. iterate over all those with revised XPath queries for each one
2 Likes
5

Actually xql is something ChatGPT is pretty good at.

Try giving it your xml and asking for what you want in Xojo xql code, should get you started.

6

Hi Christian. Thanks for your answer. I did say that I would be using loops in my post :wink:
I’m not sure what a XPath query is, but I’ll check it out.
The child calls were only to try to show as clearly as possible, what was blocking me :+1:t2:

7

Very interesting. I would try that but I don’t use ChatGPT al all :joy:.
Thanks for your answer Michelle.

8

Thanks for your reply Marcus. That’s just what I was missing​:+1:t2:. I didn’t quite dig deep enough :joy:. I have now tried your way and it works just fine.

Thanks to you and to all who answered :smiley:

1 Like