XmlSearch

Description

Uses an XPath language expression to search an XML document object.

Returns

An array of XML object nodes that match the search criteria.

Function syntax

XmlSearch(xmlDoc, xPathString)

History

ColdFusion MX 7: Added support for attribute searches.

ColdFusion MX: Added this function.

Parameters

Parameter	Description
xmlDoc	XML document object
xPathString	XPath expression

Usage

The XmlSearch function does not support complete XPath syntax. It only supports XPath expressions that return one or more XML nodes and attribute searches. XPath expressions that return any other type of value, such as a string, number, or Boolean, generate errors.

XPath is specified by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). For detailed information on XPath, including XPath expression syntax, see the W3C website at www.w3.org/TR/xpath.

Example

The following example extracts the elements named last, which contain employee last names, from an XML file, and displays the names.

The employeesimple.xml file contains the following XML:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<employee>
<!-- A list of employees -->
 <name EmpType="Regular">
  <first>Almanzo</first>
  <last>Wilder</last>
 </name>
 <name EmpType="Contract">
  <first>Laura</first>
  <last>Ingalls</last>
 </name>
</employee>

The CFML file contains the following lines:

<cfscript>
   myxmldoc = XmlParse("C:\CFusionMX7\wwwroot\examples\employeesimple.xml");
   selectedElements = XmlSearch(myxmldoc, "/employee/name/last");
   for (i = 1; i LTE ArrayLen(selectedElements); i = i + 1)
      writeoutput(selectedElements[i].XmlText & "<br>");
</cfscript>

Version 7

Comments

davidfekke said on Nov 18, 2005 at 1:46 PM :

XMLSearch() works fine until you set a XmlNsURI anywhere in the XML document. You can test this by adding a xmlns="anyURLHere" name attribute in any tag in your XML file. Once this is set, XMLSearch() breaks.

serat said on Nov 19, 2005 at 12:15 PM :

There's a subtle case when working with XML docs using a default, no-name namespace that might be worth documenting. For more see:
http://www.talkingtree.com/blog/index.cfm/2005/11/18/XmlSearchNoNameNamespace

Return-Path said on Apr 11, 2006 at 2:40 AM :

A tip: searches on the same xml document object, e.g. in a shared scope, are not reentrant (thread-safe).

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