Question

I am having the problem that I cannot select a specific XML node which needs to be deleted. I have already tried to select the node by using the XPath which works fine for some XML files but I cannot figure out the correct XPath for a node in a more complex file.

Does anybody know a freeware tool which can load a XML file so that the user can select a specific node and receives the accurate XPath without having an enumeration in the path?

/root/anything[2] <– unfortunatly I cannot use such a statement because the number of the element might change. I need an expression that is based on an attribute.

In case that there is no freeware tool for this operation, does anybody know another way how I can select the needed node?

XML Sample:

Root Node: SmsFormData

Attributes: xmlns:xsi=’http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance&#8217; xmlns:xsd=’http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema&#8217; FormatVersion=’1.0′ xmlns=’http://schemas.microsoft.com/SystemsManagementServer/2005/03/ConsoleFramework&#8217;

Child node: Form

Attributes: Id=’some GUID’ CustomData=’Some data’ FormType=’some type’ ForceRefresh=’false’

Child/Child node: Pages

Child/Child/Child node: Page

Attributes: VendorId=’VendorName’ Id=’some GUID’ Assembly=’dll File name’ Namespace=’some Namespace’ Type=’some Type’ HelpID=”>

My xPath expression to select this specific page would now be:

xPath = /SmsFormData/Form/Pages/Page[@Id='some Guid']

To do the selection I am using the following vbscript code:

Set objDOM = CreateObject('Msxml2.DOMDocument.4.0')  objDOM.async = false             objDOM.load(file)        set objNode = objDOM.selectSingleNode(xPath) 

The problem is now that the objNode object is empty. The node is not selected, but why?

Answer 1

This is a default namespace issue. Try including the following code after you load in the XML:

objDom.SetProperty 'SelectionNamespaces', 'xmlns:cf=''http://schemas.microsoft.com/SystemsManagementServer/2005/03/ConsoleFramework''' 

You then use this cf prefix in your XPath eg:

objDom.SelectSingleNode('/cf:SmsFormData/cf:Form/cf:Pages/cf:Page[@Id='Some Guid']') 

Whilst this may seem a bit quirky, it is intentional behaviour. Take a look at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/288147 for more information, and you may find http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms950779.aspx useful as well.