Parsing non-consistent XML-objects using Powershell

Question

I'm trying to parse an XML which doesn't consist of uniform attributes. Example

<root>
<object>
  <name>Object1</name>
  <valueString>string</valueString>
</object>
<object>
  <name>Object2</name>
  <valueBoolean>true</valueBoolean>
</object>
</root>

The number of sub attributes is always the same but sometimes its a boolean and sometimes its a string and the tag name changes accordingly. The issue is not the type itself but, with Powershell, I have to know the tag name beforehand to obtain the value attached to it.

At the moment I'm doing something like this:

foreach($item in $items){
  if(!$item.object.valueString){
     $temp = $item.object.valueBoolean
  }
  else{
     $temp = $item.object.valueString
  }
  $properties = @{
      Name = $item.object.Name
      value = $temp
  }
}

This works but I would like a more elegant solution + at the moment it's quite rigid and you have to cater for each and every possibility.

Is there a better way ?

Cheers

user4003407 · Accepted Answer · 2015-01-19 06:17:05Z

2

You can use ChildNodes property to access child elements by their order:

$xml=[xml]@'
<root>
  <object>
    <name>Object1</name>
    <valueString>string</valueString>
  </object>
  <object>
    <name>Object2</name>
    <valueBoolean>true</valueBoolean>
  </object>
</root>
'@
foreach($object in $xml.root.object){
    $value=$object.ChildNodes[1]
    [PSCustomObject]@{
        Name=$object.Name
        ValueName=$value.Name
        Value=$value.'#text'
    }
}

answered Jan 19, 2015 at 6:17

user4003407

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Comments

Nathan Tuggy · Accepted Answer · 2015-01-19 06:56:06Z

This doesn't necessarily solve the general problem of weird XML junk, but a helper function to coalesce the different possibilities could make things trimmer. Tested:

function value ($parent) {
    :args foreach ($name in $args) {
        $v = $parent.$("value$name")
        if ($v -ne $null) {$v; break args}
    }
}

And you use it like value ($item.object) Boolean String, assuming all those nodes have the same valueXXX pattern. (If they're always from a fixed set, you can trim the usage down further by hard-coding that set in instead of $args. If there's a lot more variation than valueXXX, you'll need to tweak the helper function accordingly.)

Explanation: Uses $args to grab all the unnamed arguments, then loops through, building the property accessor on the fly from a string interpolation, and finds the first non-null result, which it then returns. Loop is labeled just to be sure.

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