Use XML to fill variable in Powershell

Question

I need to tell that iI'm programming in Powershell for quiet short time and there is some basic that I do not handle well for the moment.

So what I'm trying to do is to pre-enter data into a XML file to use those data and populate $var into powershell then use those var to change Active Directory Attribute. For the change AD attribute i'm good, but the automation process by calling XML file to fill my var is simply not working at all. I think i'm not using the got method and that's why i'm asking for help.

Here's my XML file (where I have only two Site declared)

<Location>
  <Site> 
    <City>Alma</City> 
    <Street>333 Pont Champlain Street</Street> 
    <POBox></POBox>
    <State>Ontario</State> 
    <Zip>G1Q 1Q9</Zip>
    <Country>CA</Country>
    <OfficePhone>+1 555-555-2211</OfficePhone>
   </Site> 

  <Site> 
    <City>Dolbeau</City> 
    <Street>2525 Avenue du Pinpont</Street> 
    <POBox></POBox>
    <State>Quebec</State> 
    <Zip>G2Q 2Q9</Zip>
    <Country>CA</Country>
    <OfficePhone>+1 555-555-3000</OfficePhone>        
  </Site>
</Location>

I want to use a var name $Destination to "-match" location.site.city. If the $destination match city, then fill the var

$Newcity = location.site.city
$NewStreet = location.site.street
$NewState = location.site.state

etc, etc

Here's the part of script I did but I can't get the result that I want.

$var1 = ""
$Street = ""
$Destination = "Alma"

[xml]$SiteAttribute = Get-Content SitesAttributes.xml

foreach( $City in $SiteAttribute.location.Site){
    $var1 = $site.city    
    If ($var1 -match $Destination){
       $NewStreet = $Site.Street
       $NewCity = $Site.city
       $NewPoBox = $site.POBox
       $NewState = $site.State
       $Newzip = $Site.zip
       $NewCountry = $Site.country
       $NewPhone = $Site.OfficePhone
       } 
}

Then I would use those var to change my AD attribute with an other Powershell command

##Normal AD module come with W2k8
Import-Module ActiveDirectory

Set-ADUser $username -server $dc -StreetAddress $NewStreet -City $NewCity -State $NewState -PostalCode $NewZip -OfficePhone $NewPhone  -Country $NewCountry

But all my try faild, cause I think my Foreach statement followed by my If statement is not adequate for the process I want to do. Any advice ?

Thanks John

Answer 1

Here's another option using Select-XML and Where-Object to filter the Site, and a Splatting technic, using a hashtable with keys that correspond to the cmdlet parameter names.

The advantage of this vs the SelectNodes method is that XML is case sensitive, and you might not get what you want if you supply 'alma' and the casing of the value in the file is different.

Visit this page for more info about splatting.

[xml]$xml = Get-Content SitesAttributes.xml
$site = $xml | Select-Xml -XPath "//Location/Site" | Where-Object {$_.Node.City -match 'alma'}

$params = @{
       StreetAddress = $site.Node.Street
       City = $site.Node.city
       State = $site.Node.State
       PostalCode = $site.Node.zip
       Country = $site.Node.country
       OfficePhone = $site.Node.OfficePhone
}

Import-Module ActiveDirectory
Set-ADUser $username -server $dc @params

Answer 2

Try this:

$var1 = ""
$Street = ""
$Destination = "Alma"
[xml]$SiteAttribute = Get-Content SitesAttributes.xml

foreach( $Site in $SiteAttribute.location.Site){ #this line in your code has issue
    $var1 = $Site.city    
    If ($var1 -match $Destination){
       $NewStreet = $Site.Street
       $NewCity = $Site.city
       $NewPoBox = $site.POBox
       $NewState = $site.State
       $Newzip = $Site.zip
       $NewCountry = $Site.country
       $NewPhone = $Site.OfficePhone
       } 
}

Answer 3

It seems you only had a typo in your foreach loop (you used $City in... instead of $Site in ... ). An alternative to clean up your answer would be to only get the matching site in the first place.

Ex:

$xml = [xml](Get-Content .\my.xml)
$destination = "Alma"

$sites = $xml.SelectNodes("/Location/Site[City='$destination']")

$sites | % { 
    $NewStreet = $_.Street
    $NewCity = $_.city
    $NewPoBox = $_.POBox
    $NewState = $_.State
    $Newzip = $_.zip
    $NewCountry = $_.country
    $NewPhone = $_.OfficePhone
    }

#Printing variables to test
$NewStreet
$NewCity
$NewPoBox
$NewState
$Newzip
$NewCountry
$NewPhone

Be aware that xpath is case-sensitive so $destination has to be be identical to the value in the XML.