Often you may want to use PowerShell to select a specific node of an XML file based on an attribute value.
You can use the following syntax to do so:
[xml]$my_xml = Get-Content my_data.xml
$my_xml.team.info.name | Where-Object { $_.id -eq 'M1209' }
This particular example selects the node with the structure team.info.name that has an id value of M1209.
Note: We use the Where-Object cmdlet to search through the contents of the XML file and return only the nodes that have an id attribute equal to ( -eq ) a specific value.
The following example shows how to use this syntax in practice.
Example: How to Use PowerShell to Select XML Node by Attribute Value
Suppose that we have an XML file named my_data.xml in our current directory.
We can use the Get-Content cmdlet to view the contents of this file:
Suppose that we would like to select only the <name> tag that contains an id value of M1209.
We can use the following syntax to do so:
[xml]$my_xml = Get-Content my_data.xml
$my_xml.team.info.name | Where-Object { $_.id -eq 'M1209' }
The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:
Notice that this returns only the contents of the <name> tag where the id value is M1209.
The output also displays the text within the <name> tag, which is Mavs.
Feel free to use similar syntax to select any node from an XML file based on a specific attribute value.
Note: You can find the complete documentation for the Where-Object cmdlet in PowerShell here.
Related Tutorials
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in PowerShell:
PowerShell: How to Update Content in XML File
PowerShell: How to Convert XML to String
PowerShell: How to Edit a JSON File
