Using Xpath on an XML wrapped in CDATA

akentanaka · March 11th, 2009, 01:42 AM

Hi,

I'm having difficulty extracting the value (75) in REQUEST_ID from below XML

<result>
<row>
<column label="MESSAGE_SEQ_ID" name="MESSAGE_SEQ_ID"><![CDATA[974]]></column>
<column label="MESSAGE_PROCESS_FLAG" name="MESSAGE_PROCESS_FLAG"><![CDATA[NEW]]></column>
<column label="SOAP_XML" name="SOAP_XML"><![CDATA[<result><row><column name="REQUEST_ID" label="REQUEST_ID">75</column></row></result>]]></column>
</row>
</result>

Is it possible to use XPATH directly to extract the information?

I thought of making another document to isolate SOAP_XML then use Xpath. But still I can't retrieve the data.

Thanks for the help.

mrame · March 11th, 2009, 02:15 AM

Try this:

Code:

 
<xsl:template match="result">
<xsl:apply-templates select="row"></xsl:apply-templates>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="row">
<xsl:apply-templates select="column"></xsl:apply-templates>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="column">
<xsl:variable name="col" select="."></xsl:variable>
<xsl:analyze-string select="$col" regex="&lt;column name=(.)REQUEST_ID(.) label=(.)REQUEST_ID(.)&gt;([0-9]+)&lt;/column&gt;">
<xsl:matching-substring>
<xsl:value-of select="regex-group(5)"></xsl:value-of>
</xsl:matching-substring>
</xsl:analyze-string>
</xsl:template>

There may be a better and easy solution than this.

joefawcett · March 11th, 2009, 04:02 AM

Wrapping XML in CDATA, and therefore turning into text, is such a bad practice and defeats the object of markup.
One alternative to parsing it as text as mrame suggests is to use an extension function. Saxon for example has saxon:parse.

akentanaka · March 11th, 2009, 04:46 AM

So it's not possible to use XPATH directly.

Then I will use RegEx. :(

Thanks, mrame!

@joefawcett - I can't use saxon:parse. :(

joefawcett · March 11th, 2009, 05:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by akentanaka

So it's not possible to use XPATH directly.

No, because it's not XML, it's text.

Quote:

Then I will use RegEx. :(

Thanks, mrame!

Quote:

@joefawcett - I can't use saxon:parse. :(

Which XSLT processor are you using?