Stripping XML Name Spaces And Node Prefixes From ColdFusion XML Data (To Simplify XPath)

Posted January 28, 2007 at 1:31 PM by Ben Nadel

Tags: ColdFusion, XStandard WYSIWYG

Reader Comments

Hey Ben,

This article might help.

<http://www.talkingtree.com/blog/index.cfm/2005/11/18/XmlSearchNoNameNamespace>;

I'm not sure about this since I have not tried to do what you are doing.

What Ive experienced with this is if it DOES have a namespace then Erat's Blog entry will work fine. I am never sure if the XML im working with contains a namespace or not, and if it does not contain a namespace and you use the //:node syntax, it will generate an error. This is at least what I have experienced.

I use Ben's first method
"//*[name()='searchFor']". Yes it isnt pretty, but it handles the XML searching better for me. XPath is great, you can do a lot with it.

It just seems a bit of an overkill to use a regex to do what the XPath equivilant will do. Having a regex do everything is nice, but to me it still looks "nasty". When was a regex ever pretty?

You can search for an xml element regardless of whether it has a namespace using local-name() in an XPath search.

i.e. find all elements named "Response" regardless of namespace and location in the document's parent-child hierarchy:
<cfset MyArray = XMLSearch(MyXMLDoc, "//*[local-name()='Response']"

See more here: http://aftergeek.blogspot.com/2006/08/xmlsearch-xpath-and-xml-namespaces-in.html

Matthew,

That's a good point... why does it have to look pretty. I guess, when i use the method () it just feels like I am hacking something together. It feels like a work around. But if the consensus is that it is ok, well then, I am ok with that.

You could just clear out the namespace attribute (xmlns) with StructClear() or StructDelete() and then you can just go in and use the //search/term.

I dont claim to know much about namespaces myself, but this would be a workaround if you are sure you do not need the namespace. I dont know if the XML will validate without a namespace. As before, the inital way I normally do things disregards the namespace attribute, and I think that is why I lean towards this way of doing things.

nice workaround, but it's much cleaner and simpler (once you get the hang of it) to XmlTransform() and XSLT to transform the original XML into the XML formatted the way you want.

@Aaron,

I have never really done XSLT before. Is there a very generic way to create a document that has no name spaces?

Glad you made me research this. Simply use the XSLT in #41 at http://www.dpawson.co.uk/xsl/sect2/N5536.html#d7594e1750. XmlTransform() your XML doc with it, using the sample on http://www.cfquickdocs.com/?getDoc=XmlSearch#XmlTransform as a guide. I tested, and it works perfectly against the sample in your blog entry here. Let me know if you want the test code I put together.

cheers. ;D

@Aaron,

Back when you posted this, it made no sense to me. But this was a few weeks ago. I've been doing some learning on XSLT and actually did an introductory presentation this morning at my office. Now, looking at the link you provided, it actually makes sense. Rock on.

@Ben -

Yes, I noticed your XSLT Intro post today during my morning blog reading, and you did an excellent job explaining to newbies and vets alike. The beauty of it once it's starts to click is a wonderful thing. Thanks for all your continuing efforts for the CF community! (I still want to know how you have time, after blogging so much, to get much real work done... ;-)

@Aaron,

Thanks! Glad that you think it was a good job :) It was a lot of information for me to absorb, try to understand, and then try to explain to other people. Luckily, most them were totally uninterested, so no hard questions were asked ;)

As far as time, a presentation like that takes a while. I stayed in the office from 5:30pm to 10:45pm, so that was a bit of a bear. Most things I write don't take nearly that long. But, this, unlike a lot of other stuff, was on company time since it was for a staff meeting - sweeet!

Thanks for your article.

It has the perfect solution I implemented
(although I brute forced the namespace removal in a specific xml)
Now I can use your function globally!

However, with your code it leaves spaces after the nodename...
<Envelope ><Body><GetSOListByCustomerIdResult ><List>

So I added a space before "xmlns" to make it
<cfset strXml = strXml.ReplaceAll(
" xmlns(:\w+)?=""[^""]*""",
""
) />

now my tags seem to come out correctly,
Did I fix a typo, or will this bite me in the rear somewhere later?

My xml seems to come out right now...
<Envelope><Body><GetSOListByCustomerIdResult><List>

P.S.
Lets hope I get this captcha math problem right :)

@Steve,

Not sure why you were getting the white space. But, glad you got it working out now.

You are just great man...

Thank you so much you have helped out twice. I agree with everyone else YOU R GREAT!!!

@Sheme,

This can definitely be put into a CFC.

This had me stumped.. thanks alot!

Nice work. This helped me in a project.

Thanks Ben...

Thanks for the post. Don't know if this is related, but I had the following problem code in CF8 :

<cfxml variable="validxHTML3Str">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en">
<head>
<meta
name="generator"
content="HTML Tidy for Java (vers. 2009-12-01), see jtidy.sourceforge.net" />
<meta
http-equiv="Content-Type"
content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />

<title>My Title</title>
</head>
</html>
</cfxml>

<cfset xmldocObj=
xmlParse( trim( validxHTML3Str) ) />

<cfset arrSearchNodes = XmlSearch(
xmldocObj,
"//html/head/meta" ) />

<cfdump var="#arrSearchNodes#"
label="meta XPath Search Results" />

<!--- ERROR: arrSearchNodes is empty. TO FIX PROBLEM, I had to remove the xmlns and xml:lang from the <html> tag. Like so: --->

<cfxml variable="validxHTML3Str">
<html>
<head>
<meta
name="generator"
content="HTML Tidy for Java (vers. 2009-12-01), see jtidy.sourceforge.net" />
<meta
http-equiv="Content-Type"
content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />

<title>My Title</title>
</head>
</html>
</cfxml>

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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