XML response with only specific subelements

šŸŒ± Just Getting Started
1

Very much at the beginning of the learning curveā€¦

I send a succesful XML soap post to an open API. I get a response, but I only need specific subelements of the reponse.

<queryResult total="7015734" pageSize="3" pageNumber="1">
                <namespace:person uuid="72a350f0-eb0b-4607147">
                    <namespace:name id="979928772">
                        <namespace:firstName>First name</namespace:firstName>
                        <namespace:lastName>Last name</namespace:lastName>
                    </namespace:name>
                </namespace:person>
               <namespace:hidden>false</namespace:hidden>
               <namespace:dataProvider>provider 1</namespace:dataProvider>
               <namespace:dataProviderId>611e17002a88b2b17778</namespace:dataProviderId>
               <namespace:sources/>
</queryResult>

I only need the namespace:name and the namespace:dataProviderId to be returned. I tried to add in the headers a XPath with value ā€œ//namespace:person/namespace:nameā€, but I still get the full XML.

Iā€™m very much scratching my head on how to ā€˜filterā€™ for the specific subelements Iā€™m interested in.

2

Postman doesnā€™t have great support for XPath, so as far as Iā€™m aware you are stuck to parsing to a JavaScript object and working with that object.

Here is some code to consider.

var xmlString = "<queryResult total='7015734' pageSize='3' pageNumber='1'><namespace:person uuid='72a350f0-eb0b-4607147'><namespace:name id='979928772'><namespace:firstName>First name</namespace:firstName><namespace:lastName>Last name</namespace:lastName></namespace:name></namespace:person><namespace:hidden>false</namespace:hidden><namespace:dataProvider>provider 1</namespace:dataProvider><namespace:dataProviderId>611e17002a88b2b17778</namespace:dataProviderId><namespace:sources/></queryResult>";

// parse the XML to a Javascript object.
var javascriptObject = xml2Json(xmlString); 

// just a pretty view of the XML (by converting the javaScript object back to an XML string)
var xml2js = require("xml2js");
var builder = new xml2js.Builder();
console.log(builder.buildObject(javascriptObject));

// accessing the elements directly.
console.log(javascriptObject.queryResult['namespace:person']['namespace:name']['namespace:firstName']);
console.log(javascriptObject.queryResult['namespace:person']['namespace:name']['namespace:lastName']);
console.log(javascriptObject.queryResult['namespace:dataProviderId']);

// create a new JavaScript object with just the info you want
let newObj = {
    firstName: `${javascriptObject.queryResult['namespace:person']['namespace:name']['namespace:firstName']}`,
    lastName: `${javascriptObject.queryResult['namespace:person']['namespace:name']['namespace:lastName']}`,
    dataProviderId: `${javascriptObject.queryResult['namespace:dataProviderId']}`    
    }
console.log(newObj);

With the associated console logs.

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