Parsing XML response, Values preceded by delimited null in Debug, Returns Null variable assignment

Question

I have an external system I am making a SOAP HTTP POST request to that has a simple response. I need to store both returned values as string variables for further processing. Here is the response from the server I am trying to parse:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"     xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
  <soap:Body>
    <AddDataResponse xmlns="https://generic-api.website.com">
      <AddDataResult>
        <RecordID>1234</RecordID>
        <ErrorDescription>something went wrong</ErrorDescription>
      </AddDataResult>
    </AddDataResponse>
  </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

I have tried several patterns, but end up with the values being null. Here are the patterns I have tried:

//create DOM doc with HTTPResponse body

Dom.Document doc = res.getBodyDocument();
Dom.XMLNode root = doc.getRootElement();

string RecordId = root.getChildElement('RecordID', null).getText().trim();
string Error = getChildElement('ErrorDescription', null).getText().trim();

Here is a separate class pattern I tried , but the text values return null as well.

 public class XMLparser{

  Public void parseXML(String xmlfile)
  {
       DOM.Document xmlDOC = new DOM.Document();
       xmlDOC.load(xmlfile);
       DOM.XMLNode rootElement = xmlDOC.getRootElement();
       System.Debug('$$$$ Root Element'+rootelement);

       for(DOM.XMLNode xmlNodeObj:xmlDOC.getRootElement().getChildElements()){

       System.Debug('$$$ Child Elements'+xmlNodeObj);
       for(DOM.XMLNode xmlNodeObjChild:xmlNodeObj.getChildren())
       {
       System.Debug('$$$ Childrens'+xmlNodeObjChild.getChildren());      
             if(xmlNodeObjChild.getName()=='RecordId')
             System.Debug(xmlNodeObjChild.getText().trim());
             if(xmlNodeObjChild.getName()=='ErrorDescription')
             System.Debug(xmlNodeObjChild.getText().trim());

                } 
            }
        }
    }

Here is the debug log for the execution. It remains consistent. There seems to be 5 null values that come before the text value I am after.

    [XMLNode[ELEMENT,AddDataResult,https://generic-api.website.com,null,null,
    [XMLNode[ELEMENT,RecordID,https://generic-api.website.com,null,null,
    [XMLNode[TEXT,null,null,null,null,null,1234,]],null,],
    [XMLNode[ELEMENT,ErrorDescription,https://generic-api.website.com,null,null,
    [XMLNode[TEXT,null,null,null,null,null,Client Inactive,]],null,]],null,]],null,]],null,]],null,]"|0xbcd6e9b

The values I am after are present in the text nodes, but I can't seem to get the value at the end of the delimited null values. Is there a better way to parse the response or to move past the null values? Any input is appreciate. Thanks!

Answer 1

I hate XML parsing.

here you go though. this will get you the Record ID after traversing down the tree

HTTPresponse resp = New HttpResponse();
resp.setBody('<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <soap:Envelope xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"     xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"> <soap:Body> <AddDataResponse xmlns="https://generic-api.website.com"> <AddDataResult> <RecordID>1234</RecordID> <ErrorDescription>something went wrong</ErrorDescription> </AddDataResult> </AddDataResponse> </soap:Body> </soap:Envelope>');

dom.document doc = resp.getBodyDocument();
Dom.XMLNode root = doc.getRootElement();
DOM.XmlNode bodyNode = root.getChildElement('Body', 'http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/');
DOM.XmlNode adresponseNode = bodyNode.getChildElement('AddDataResponse','https://generic-api.website.com');
DOM.XmlNode adresultNode = adresponseNode.getChildElement('AddDataResult','https://generic-api.website.com');
String recordId = adresultNode.getChildElement('RecordID','https://generic-api.website.com').getText();
System.debug(recordId);

You can remove the response part as it is there for testing. You can however copy and paste the example in exec anon to see it works. I had to get every child element

This is what I used to get to the value needed for each. When I used null for namespace I got back null so NS was required - below code is not written to be best practice so don't critique lol

for (DOM.XmlNode x : root.getChildren()) {
    System.debug(x.getName());
    System.debug(x.getNamespace());
    for (DOM.XmlNode child : x.getChildren()) {
        System.debug(child.getName());
        System.debug(child.getNamespace());
        for (DOM.XmlNode child2 : child.getChildren()) {
            System.debug(child2.getName());
            System.debug(child2.getNamespace());
            for (DOM.XmlNode child3 : child2.getChildren()) {
                System.debug(child3.getName());
                System.debug(child3.getNamespace());

            }


        }

    }

}

Answer 2

You can use my XMLSerializer to parse the data. Here is the link: https://github.com/skolakan/Apex-XML-Serializer

Usage: First define class structure to match your soap response XML

public class SoapResponse {    

    public EnvelopeModel Envelope {get;set;}

    public class EnvelopeModel{
        public BodyModel Body{get;set;}
    }

    public class BodyModel{
        public AddDataResponseModel AddDataResponse{get;set;}
    }
    public class AddDataResponseModel{
        Public AddDataResultModel AddDataResult{get;set;}
    }

    public class AddDataResultModel{
        public string RecordId {get;set;}
        public string ErrorDescription {get;set;}
    }
}

Then deSerialize soap response to apex class

//sample response
String xmlString = '<?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><AddDataResponse xmlns="https://generic-api.website.com"><AddDataResult><RecordID>1234</RecordID><ErrorDescription>something went wrong</ErrorDescription></AddDataResult></AddDataResponse></soap:Body></soap:Envelope>';
//Modify tags with soap: prefix because the properties cannot have :
xmlString = xmlString.replace('soap:','');
//deserialize
SoapResponse response = (SoapResponse)XMLSerializer.deserialize(xmlString,SoapResponse.class);

Now you can access the data from apex object

System.debug('RecordId:' + response.Envelope.Body.AddDataResponse.AddDataResult.RecordId);
System.debug('ErrorDescription:' + response.Envelope.Body.AddDataResponse.AddDataResult.ErrorDescription);

This will output

09:49:13:012 USER_DEBUG [5]|DEBUG|RecordId:1234
09:49:13:012 USER_DEBUG [6]|DEBUG|ErrorDescription:something went wrong