Xml – Looping through XML file elements

vbscriptxml

I have a XML file below. I want to loop through this file and extract the node node value, like for node <com> get the name value and then loop 2 times to get the file values. I can currently get the value for the node <com> but am unsure how to loop inside and get the values for file node.

<common>
  <com name="Test1.css">
    <file name="Tech.css"/>
    <file name="Comp.css"/> 
  </com>
  <com name="Test2.css">
    <file name="HR.css"/>
    <file name="HR2.css"/> 
  </com> 
</common>

Dim xmlDoc, objNodeList, plot
Set xmlDoc = CreateObject("Msxml2.DOMDocument")
xmlDoc.setProperty "SelectionLanguage", "XPath"
xmlDoc.load("C:\test\combineXML.xml")
WScript.Echo xmlDoc.parseError
Set objNodeList = xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("com")
If objNodeList.length > 0 then
    For each x in objNodeList
        JobName = x.getattribute("name")
        WScript.Echo JobName
    Next
End If

Best Answer

You're making this too complicated. Just select the name attribute from the child nodes of all com nodes with an XPath expression:

Set xmlDoc = CreateObject("Msxml2.DOMDocument")
xmlDoc.async = False
xmlDoc.load "C:\test\combineXML.xml"
If xmlDoc.parseError = 0 Then
  For Each x In xmlDoc.selectNodes("//com/*/@name")
    WScript.Echo x.text
  Next
End If

Use //com/file/@name if you need the expression to be more specific (in case there are other child nodes with a name attribute.

If you also want attributes from a parent node, you'll have to modify it like this:

Set xmlDoc = CreateObject("Msxml2.DOMDocument")
xmlDoc.async = False
xmlDoc.load "C:\test\combineXML.xml"
If xmlDoc.parseError = 0 Then
  For Each x In xmlDoc.selectNodes("//com/*")
    WScript.Echo x.parentNode.getAttribute("name") & ": " _
      & x.getAttribute("name")
  Next
End If

XML escape characters

There are only five:

"   &quot;
'   &apos;
<   &lt;
>   &gt;
&   &amp;

Escaping characters depends on where the special character is used.

The examples can be validated at the W3C Markup Validation Service.

Text

The safe way is to escape all five characters in text. However, the three characters ", ' and > needn't be escaped in text:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<valid>"'></valid>

Attributes

The safe way is to escape all five characters in attributes. However, the > character needn't be escaped in attributes:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<valid attribute=">"/>

The ' character needn't be escaped in attributes if the quotes are ":

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<valid attribute="'"/>

Likewise, the " needn't be escaped in attributes if the quotes are ':

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<valid attribute='"'/>

Comments

All five special characters must not be escaped in comments:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<valid>
<!-- "'<>& -->
</valid>

CDATA

All five special characters must not be escaped in CDATA sections:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<valid>
<![CDATA["'<>&]]>
</valid>

Processing instructions

All five special characters must not be escaped in XML processing instructions:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?process <"'&> ?>
<valid/>

XML vs. HTML

HTML has its own set of escape codes which cover a lot more characters.

Xml – How to set the encoding statement in the XML declaration when performing an XSL transformation using a COM Msxml2.XSLTemplate

The problem is that the output of the transform() method of the XSLT processor is being serialised as a string when you access the output property (either directly or indirectly), and Windows uses UTF-16 encoding for strings. The MSDN documentation of the output property mentions this almost in passing at the foot of the page:

In this case, the output is always generated in the Unicode encoding, and the encoding attribute on the element is ignored.

(where they mean UTF-16 when they say "the Unicode encoding".)

If you use transformNodeToObject, specifying a new DOMDocument object as the output, then you can save the serialisation of the UTF-8 encoded content from that.

Better still for your case, if you have an object implementing the IStream interface such as the stream associated with the file you're trying to save, you can pass that to transformNodeToObject to send the UTF-8 output directly to disk. (I can't remember if you have to open and close the file manually in this case, so you'll have to experiment with that.)