XPath syntax error via Ansible playbook for SOAP XML

Question

I have a requirement where I need to read an element from a XML file. The content in file has SOAP content. While reading the element from the file, the XPath defined is giving the error as below:

 fatal: [localhost]: FAILED: => {"changed", false: "msg": "Syntax error in xpath expression: `/x:soap:Envelope/x:soap:Body/z:WebService_Response/z:WebService_GenericResult/` (Invalid expression)"}

Ansible tasks:

- name: read value from the ayehu xml
  xml:
    path: ./ayehu_rest_out.xml
    xpath: /x:soap:Envelope/x:soap:Body/y:WebService_Response/y:WebService_GenericResult/
    content: text
    namespaces:
            x: "http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
            y: "http://WebService.domain.com/"
  register:  xml_value_content
- debug:
      var:  xml_value_content

XML file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:xsd="http:/ /www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
   <soap:Body>
      <WebService_Response xmlns="http://WebService.domain.com/">
         <WebService_GenericResult>
      STATE=STOPPED------COMMENTS=Cant startup as Ayehu did not shutdown this database
         </WebService_GenericResult>
      </WebService_Response>
   </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

I need to get the value "STATE=STOPPED------COMMENTS=Cant startup as Ayehu did not shutdown this database" .

Update:

This is the ansible updated code:

- name: read value from the ayehu xml
  xml:
    path: ./ayehu_rest_out.xml
    xpath: /env:Envelope/env:Body/y:WebService_Response/y:WebService_GenericResult/
    content: text
    namespaces:
           env: "http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
           y: "http://WebService.domain.com/"
  register:  xml_value_content

- debug:
    var:  xml_value_content

Error:

 TASK [read value from the ayehu xml] ****************************************************** fatal: [localhost]: FAILED: => {"changed", false: "msg": "Syntax error in xpath expression: /env:Envelope/env:Body/y:WebService_Response/y:WebService_GenericResult/ (Invalid expression)"}

Answer 1

Three problems:

1. There should be no trailing / in the XPath expression.
2. There should be only a single namespace prefix per element name, not two.
3. Namespace prefix z should be y given your Ansible declarations.

Based on your Ansible Code defined namespace prefixes,

namespaces:
        x: "http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
        y: "http://WebService.domain.com/"

change

/x:soap:Envelope/x:soap:Body/z:WebService_Response/z:WebService_GenericResult/ 

to

/x:Envelope/x:Body/y:WebService_Response/y:WebService_GenericResult 

Note the dropped trailing / , the dropped soap namespace prefixes, and the z to y changed namespace prefixes.

You might want to use a more conventional prefix for the soap envelope than x ( soapenv , env , soap , etc), but the namespace prefix is arbitrary as long as its use matches its declared binding to the important part, the namespace URI value itself.

See also

• Does having a different name for the XML namespace prefix matter?