Google Apps Script: Directly accessing a XML element

Question

How do I get the element value of <PeriodLength> in the XML document below?

<AnnualPeriods>
     <FiscalPeriod Type="Annual" EndDate="2009-06-30" FiscalYear="2009">
        <Statement Type="**INC**">
             <FPHeader>
                 <PeriodLength>**12**</PeriodLength>
                 <periodType Code="M">Months</periodType>

This is my current code snippet:

for (var k = 0; k < statements.length; k++) {     
   var values = elements[i].getChildren('Statement')[k]
       .getChildren('lineItem');
   var statementType = elements[i].getChildren('Statement')[k]
       .getAttribute('Type'); // INC, BAL, CAS
   var header = elements[i].getChildren('Statement')[k]
       .getChild('FPHeader');
   var periodLength = header.getChild('PeriodLength');
   var periodType = header.getChild('periodType');
}

Instead of looping through the statements, I would like to "directly" access them by specifying the element as a "path", eg INC/PeriodLength .

How would you recommend doing this?

Answer 1

There is no XPath type capability in the Apps Script XML service. There some other 3rd party XML JavaScript parsers you can look into for this capability.

Some ideas here -

Cross-browser XPath implementation in JavaScript