Powershell: difficulty returning an xml element

Question

Below is an extract of an xml file

<JobList>
  <Job id="Hotel" start="2016-10-06" /> 
  <Job id="Cleaning" start="2016-10-06" /> 
  <Job id="Floor" start="2016-10-06" /> 
  <Job id="Training" start="2016-10-06" /> 
  <Job id="Meeting" start="2016-10-06" /> 
  <Job id="CI" start="2016-10-06" /> 
<Job titleId="Kitchen Associate" id="Kitchen" start="2016-10-06" rank="18">

In need to return the "titleId" and "start" from the last line.

If I write the following code I can get the titleId, "Kitchen Associate" no problems.

gc "\\path\fil.xml" | Select-Xml -XPATH "//Job/@start" | select * -expandproperty node | Select titleID

But I can't seem to return the RELATED start date as it will return back all seven of the start dates from the JobList. Is there a way of limiting the results such that it only takes it from where titleID also exists?

Thanks

woxxom · Accepted Answer · 2016-10-07 09:30:34Z

1

Use the correct XPath.

Select-Xml -XPath '//Job[@titleId and @start]' | Select -expand titleId

answered Oct 7, 2016 at 9:30

woxxom

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Comments

Andrey Marchuk · Accepted Answer · 2016-10-07 09:33:16Z

1

The problem with your code is that the approach you took is oriented towards getting attributes from different nodes, when you should get the correct node and then select its attribute. You can achieve it with XPath as well:

(gc "e:\1.txt" -Raw | Select-Xml -XPATH "//Job[@titleId]/@start").Node

but here's a more Powershell way of doing this:

$xml = [xml] (gc e:\1.txt -Raw)
$node = $xml.JobList.Job | Where-Object { $_.titleId -ne $null }
$node.start

You first select the correct node based on the titleId attribute and then you have access to all of its attributes.

Keep in mind that there's a chance that there will be more than 1 or no nodes at all that have the required titleId, so you need to check that $node is not null and how many nodes are there.

edited Oct 7, 2016 at 9:33

answered Oct 7, 2016 at 9:14

Andrey Marchuk

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3 Comments

user6171936 Over a year ago

The values can vary, so I need a select rather than a where clause.

user6171936 Over a year ago

I achieved it this way, appreciate it may be long-winded but I'm not a PS expert, or developer by nature: gc "\\path\fil.xml" | Select-Xml -XPATH "//Job" | select -expandproperty node | Select titleID, start | where {$_.titleID -ne $NULL} | Select -expandproperty titleID

Andrey Marchuk Over a year ago

that's indeed a very complex solution, see my update

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