Using XPath Expressions with Namespaces

When using an XPath expression to process XML documents, you can process data within a namespace. To access data in a namespace, define the XPath expression, then use the Namespace property to define the prefix and definition of the namespace.

For example, the following XML document includes two namespaces, one for Company A and one for Company C:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<root>
	<a:data xmlns:a="http://www.companyA.com">
		<msg>
			<time>8/12/2016 6:01:00</time>
			<request>GET /index.html 200</request>
		</msg>
	</a:data>
	<c:data xmlns:c="http://www.companyC.com">
		<sale>
			<item>Shoes</item>
			<item>Magic wand</item>
			<item>Tires</item>
		</sale>
	</c:data>
	<a:data xmlns:a="http://www.companyA.com">
		<msg>
			<time>8/12/2016 6:03:43</time>
			<request>GET /images/sponsored.gif 304</request>
		</msg>
	</a:data>
</root>

To create records from data in the msg element in the Company A namespace, you can use either of the following XPath expressions:

/root/a:data/msg
/root/*/msg

Then define the Namespace property using the prefix "a" and the namespace URI: http://www.companyA.com.

The following image shows a Directory origin configured to process this data: