Extract XML using XPath query

Question

Based on help from other questions I've asked, I've got this groovy snippet:

NodeList nodes = (NodeList)xpath.evaluate( xpathQuery, records, XPathConstants.NODESET );
return nodes.collect { node -> node.getTextContent() }

Which allows me to perform xpathQuery on records and get the result.

What I want to do now is just return (as a string) the raw xml of the result (rather than the text content) (I realise this will not result in a valid xml document).

Such that:

xml = "<root><apple><color>RED</color></apple>…</root>"
xpathQuery = "/root/apple[1]"

will return:

"<apple><color>RED</color></apple>"

(Without the enclosing <apple> tags would also be fine). Is there a simple way to do this?

Or failing that, is there another way to achieve this?

Depending on the XPath engine/API used, a returned XmlNode should have an outerXml property -- such as the .NET XmlNode type: msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/… — Dimitre Novatchev
– Dimitre Novatchev, Commented Jan 4, 2012 at 13:46
I'm using javax.xml.xpath which doesn't seem to have an outerXML property — Jack James
– Jack James, Commented Jan 4, 2012 at 17:56

JWiley · Accepted Answer · 2012-11-09 16:08:00Z

1

This isn't very elegant, but could possibly be useful:

Use this:

concat('<apple><color>', //root/apple[1]/color, '</color></apple>')

If you know the structure won't change, or for a more complicated unknown number of child elements within <apple>, use:

//root/apple[1]/node() to give you all children nodes, and use groovy's .each function to iterate through the nodes, and create your string paddings, and combine them with the original //root/apple[1]/color result.

answered Nov 9, 2012 at 16:08

JWiley

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