BizTalk xpath with a default namespace and no prefixes

Question

I'm struggling with the BizTalk xpath functionality
- the message I'm getting has a blank default namespace
- in C# I'd add a NameSpaceManager
- but I can't see how I can do this in a BizTalk Expression ?

All I'm failing to do is get the values of the HasErrors and NumberOfErrors

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<ImportIndexDocumentResponse   
      xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"        
      xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
      xmlns="http://www.aniteps.com/xml/schemas/awm/images4"&gt;
  <HasErrors>false</HasErrors>
  <NumberOfErrors xsi:type="xsd:int">0</NumberOfErrors>
  <ErrorDescription xsi:type="xsd:string">No exception ocurred.</ErrorDescription>
  ...

Answer 1

Not great from a performance point of view, but you could use a trick like:

//*[local-name()='HasErrors']

EDIT: The solution is based on the fact that once a message has been correlated, you can be certain that the XML you receive conforms to a known schema, and therefore (as in the XML example in the question) it IS safe to make this assumption. If I recall correctly even the Biztalk mapper uses this same trick, so it is correct in this scenario.

Answer 2

The answer using local-name() is wrong as it allows unwanted elements to be selected, such as:

• OhMy:HasErrors
• Different:HasErrors
• UnWanted:HasErrors

---

Here is one correct solution:

In case it is not possible to bind a prefix to the default namespace "http://www.aniteps.com/xml/schemas/awm/images4", one can use the standard XPath function namespace-uri() to specify that the element must reside in a given namespace.

Thereforere, one example of XPath expressions that select the wanted two kind of nodes is:

/*/*[namespace-uri() = 'http://www.aniteps.com/xml/schemas/awm/images4'
   and
     name() = 'HasErrors'
    ]

and the expression:

/*/*[namespace-uri() = 'http://www.aniteps.com/xml/schemas/awm/images4'
   and
     name() = 'NumberOfErrors'
    ]

Answer 3

If your elements are not repeating you could promote them from the response schema as distinguished fields. Then you do not have to worry about coding. Just use:

x = YourMessageName.HasErrors;

If it is a web/wcf reference, you can promote values from the reference.xsd (or xyz.xsd with "Consume Wcf Service Wizard"). Just be aware of that if you update the reference they will "disappear".