Trying to update xml document with powershell but having issue updating root node

Question

Doc Example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE Identity PUBLIC "point.dtd" "point.dtd"[]>
<Identity  created="1525465321820" name="Onboarding - GUI - External">
  <Attributes>
    <Map>
      <entry key="displayName" value="Onboarding - GUI " />
      <entry key="firstname" value="Z Orphaned ID" />
  </Attributes>
</Identity>

I can assign values to displayName and firstname no problem like so:

[string] $displayvalue = $xmldata.Identity.Attributes.Map.entry[0].value

[string] $firstname = $xmldata.Identity.Attributes.Map.entry[1].value

and than save.

$myFile = 'C:\somefile.xml'
$xmldata.Save($myFile)

BUT when I try to do the same for name :

[string]  $xmldata.Identity.Name = "TEST"

I got an error :

The property 'Name' cannot be found on this object. Verify that the property exists and can be set.

Thanks

Answer 1

XMLs are case sensitive and since in

<Identity  created="1525465321820" name="Onboarding - GUI - External">

"name" is lowercase, you need to use

$xmldata.Identity.name

As oppose to

$xmldata.Identity.Name

and to edit the value use

$xmldata.Identity.name = "TEST"

TESTING

PS C:\Users\Neko> [xml]$xmldata = @'
>> <Identity  created="1525465321820" name="Onboarding - GUI - External">
>>   <Attributes>
>>     <Map>
>>       <entry key="displayName" value="Onboarding - GUI " />
>>       <entry key="firstname" value="Z Orphaned ID" />
>>     </Map>
>> </Attributes>
>> </Identity>
>> '@
PS C:\Users\Neko> $xmldata.Identity.name
Onboarding - GUI - External
PS C:\Users\Neko> $xmldata.Identity.name = "TEST"
PS C:\Users\Neko> $xmldata.Identity.name
TEST

If you want to import an xml file and do this do the following:

1. Set a variable as the content of the xml file but skip the first 2 lines and set another as the first 2 lines

[xml]$var = Get-Content .\test.xml | select-object -skip 2
$var2 = Get-Content .\test.xml | select-object -first 2

2. Use $var the ways demonstrated above

$var.Identity.name

Output:

Onboarding - GUI - External

Input:

$var.Identity.name = "TEST"
$var.Identity.name

Output:

TEST

3. Then add the header back to the variable

[xml]$final = $var2 + $var.outerxml

4. Finally, save the variable back to the XML file

$final.Save("filepath")

Something about

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE Identity PUBLIC "point.dtd" "point.dtd"[]>

Powershell seems to not like, therefore if you skip them it works fine...

Tested in Powershell 5.1

---

^{Slightly changed your XML file since PS gave me errors when I used your exact XML since there was no closing </map>}

Answer 2

You are not trying the same thing for the name attribute as you do for the displayname and firstname attributes.
With the latter two, you are READING the values from the XML in string variables. With the name attribute, you are trying to SET it to a new value.

To do that, you first need to select the element that holds the attribute to update. Once you have that, you can use the SetAttribute() method of the XmlElement object(s).

[xml]$xmldata = @"
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE Identity PUBLIC "point.dtd" "point.dtd"[]>
<Identity  created="1525465321820" name="Onboarding - GUI - External">
  <Attributes>
    <Map>
      <entry key="displayName" value="Onboarding - GUI " />
      <entry key="firstname" value="Z Orphaned ID" />
    </Map>
  </Attributes>
</Identity>
"@

# select the node(s) to update, and update the name attribute
$xmldata.Identity | Where-Object { $_.name -like 'Onboarding*' } | ForEach-Object {
    $_.SetAttribute("name", "TEST")
}

# Now save the updated XM to file:
$xmldata.Save('C:\somefile.xml')

Output:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE Identity PUBLIC "point.dtd" "point.dtd"[]>
<Identity created="1525465321820" name="TEST">
  <Attributes>
    <Map>
      <entry key="displayName" value="Onboarding - GUI " />
      <entry key="firstname" value="Z Orphaned ID" />
    </Map>
  </Attributes>
</Identity>