Question

Using the XPath approach defined at http://www.w3schools.com/xpath/xpath_examples.asp
I can easily access elements in an XML string. But this does not work with a SOAP packet such as what I have below. The error I get is “SOAP-ENV is not declared”.

My XPath string

/SOAP-ENV:Envelope/SOAP-ENV:Body/SpRc:ScanPortsResponse/SpRc:PortDescs[1]

XML/SOAP message

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<SOAP-ENV:Envelope xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:SOAP-ENC="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:SpRc="urn:SpRc">
    <SOAP-ENV:Body>
        <SpRc:ScanPortsResponse>
            <SpRc:PortDescs>
                <SpRc:item>
                    <SpRc:Serial>4215002032</SpRc:Serial>
                    <SpRc:TypeNumber>215</SpRc:TypeNumber>
                    <SpRc:Ip>4M5rAQ==</SpRc:Ip>
                    <SpRc:Mac>GDAAURgk</SpRc:Mac>
                    <SpRc:FirmwareVersion>1</SpRc:FirmwareVersion>
                    <SpRc:FirmwareVariant>0</SpRc:FirmwareVariant>
                    <SpRc:Port>1</SpRc:Port>
                    <SpRc:OutputType>28738</SpRc:OutputType>
                    <SpRc:Capabilities>97</SpRc:Capabilities>
                    <SpRc:InUse>1</SpRc:InUse>
                </SpRc:item>
            </SpRc:PortDescs>
            <SpRc:SpRcResult>0</SpRc:SpRcResult>
        </SpRc:ScanPortsResponse>
    </SOAP-ENV:Body>
</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>

Answer 1

This seems to be a problem with the XML namespace. You XPath parser seems to be namespace aware. Try setting the SOAP namespace in the parser before parsing the XML.