Question

I’m using VBA to parse the soap xml with MSXML2 and XPath but while the XPath query works in various tools it doesn’t select anything in the selectNodes method. From what I’ve gathered from the numerous questions I’ve seen so far, I can use this ‘local-name’ syntax instead of specifying a namespace but nothing is ever selected. What am I doing wrong?

private const DQ = """"
Public Sub parseXML(sFileName As String)
Dim xmldoc As New MSXML2.DOMDocument60, I As IXMLDOMNodeList, x As IXMLDOMNode

With xmldoc
  .loadXML sFileName
  .SetProperty "SelectionLanguage", "XPath"
  Set I = .selectNodes("//*[local-name()=" & DQ & "item" & DQ & "]")
  If I.length > 0 Then 
    ' do something useful
  end if
End With
End Sub


<soap-env:Envelope xmlns:soap-env="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
 <soap-env:Header></soap-env:Header>
 <soap-env:Body>
  <n0:ZBexQaasResponse xmlns:n0="urn:sap-com:document:sap:soap:functions:mc-style">
   <Messages>
    <item>
      // some elements
    </item>
   </Messages>
   <OutputTable>
    <item>
     // some elements
    </item>
   </OutputTable>
   <TextElements></TextElements>
   <XmlOutput></XmlOutput>
   <XmlTxtelem></XmlTxtelem>
  </n0:ZBexQaasResponse>
 </soap-env:Body>
</soap-env:Envelope>

Answer 1

I don’t see why the code (with load instead of loadXML and the necessary async setting, as already suggested in a comment) should not work and I can’t reproduce the problem, when I have the file test2012011901.xml as

<soap-env:Envelope xmlns:soap-env="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
 <soap-env:Header></soap-env:Header>
 <soap-env:Body>
  <n0:ZBexQaasResponse xmlns:n0="urn:sap-com:document:sap:soap:functions:mc-style">
   <Messages>
    <item>
      // some elements
    </item>
   </Messages>
   <OutputTable>
    <item>
     // some elements
    </item>
   </OutputTable>
   <TextElements></TextElements>
   <XmlOutput></XmlOutput>
   <XmlTxtelem></XmlTxtelem>
  </n0:ZBexQaasResponse>
 </soap-env:Body>
</soap-env:Envelope>

and the VBScript code

Dim doc, items
Set doc = CreateObject("Msxml2.DOMDocument.6.0")
doc.async = False
If doc.load("test2012011901.xml") Then
  Set items = doc.selectNodes("//item")
  WScript.Echo "Found " & items.length & " element(s)."
  For Each item In items
    WScript.Echo item.xml
  Next
  Set items = doc.selectNodes("//*[local-name() = 'item']")
  WScript.Echo "Found " & items.length & " element(s)."
  For Each item In items
    WScript.Echo item.xml
  Next
Else
  WScript.Echo "Parse error " & doc.parseError.reason
End If

then both XPath expressions find the two item elements, as the output shows:

Found 2 element(s).
<item>
      // some elements
    </item>
<item>
     // some elements
    </item>
Found 2 element(s).
<item>
      // some elements
    </item>
<item>
     // some elements
    </item>

So as far as I can tell my suggestions in the comment should fix your problem, you will need to elaborate if you still have problems.