get a value from XML string

[waely]

Hi,
I'm using a application that processes a customer order then sends the results back in a XML string. like this:
-----------------------
<r_ordernum>18E5D0FC-404F4BB8-039-712B4</r_ordernum>
<r_authresponse></r_authresponse>
<r_message></r_message>
-------------------------

what I want to do in my aspx page is to get the <r_ordernumber> value and send it in an email. can someone help getting this piece of data from the XML string.

thanks in advance

 

[harebrain]

That will be quite a trick because you have no <r_ordernumber> element in your XML. Is that, perhaps, your problem?

 

[manitoba]

This will work in ASP, not sure about ASPX.

Dim objDoc
Set objDoc = Server.CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument.4.0")
objDoc.async = False
If objDoc.loadXML(strMyXML) Then
Response.Write objDoc.selectSingleNode("//r_ordernum").text
Else
Response.Write "error loading XML"
End If
Set objDoc = Nothing

 

[chiph]

In C# code-behind, you'd do something like:

// Build a doc
XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
XmlElement root = doc.CreateElement("root");
doc.DocumentElement.AppendChild(root);

XmlElement node = doc.CreateElement("Node1");
node.InnerText = "foo";
root.AppendChild(node);
node = doc.CreateElement("Node2");
node.InnerText = "bar";
root.AppendChild(node);

// To get the value of node2
XmlElement nodeget = doc.SelectSingleNode("root/Node2/text()");
if (null != node) {
   String nodevalue = nodeget.Value;
}

Note a couple of differences between the C# version and the ASP version:
1) In my XPath query, I used the text() function. According to the W3C spec, the text of a node isn't actually stored in the node, but in another node below it that is of type "textnode". This function gets you this value.
2) I checked the nodeget object to see if the SelectSingleNode method actually returned anything. If your XML has been validated against a XSD, and you're 100% sure the node is present, you can skip this step. If some 3rd party is sending you the XML, or it hasn't been validated, then you need to test to see if the XPath actually gave you something.
3) I'm using the .Value property to extract the value of the node, rather than the InnerText property. Under .NET, the InnerText docs say that it gives you: "The concatenated values of the node and all its children.", which may not be what you want (and likely isn't).
4) When creating my doc from XmlElement objects, I used the InnerText property. Basically because I'm lazy, and also because I know there are no children nodes to get overwritten.

And note that this code will be easy to move to VB.NET if needed, as most of it is framework calls. Big differences would be removing the semi-colon line separators, and changing how the variables are declared.

Hope this helps.
Chip H.


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