Powershell move xml node

Question

Well, i need to move xml node position inside same xml file

I've got this xml:

<METATRANSCRIPT:METATRANSCRIPT xmlns:METATRANSCRIPT="http://www.mpi.nl/IMDI/Schema/IMDI" xmlns="http://www.mpi.nl/IMDI/Schema/IMDI" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"  ArchiveHandle="hdl:2196/00-0000-0000-0013-2CB3-2" Date="2012-02-08" FormatId="IMDI 3.0"  Originator="Editor - Profile:local/SESSION.Profile.xml" Type="SESSION" Version="3"  xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.mpi.nl/IMDI/Schema/IMDI ./IMDI_3.0.xsd">
  <Session>
  <Name>Acknowledgement</Name>
  <Title>Acknowledgement written by Maria Alzira Roque Gameira in her Master's Thesis</Title>
  <Date>2009-09-16</Date>
  <Description LanguageId="ISO639-3:eng" Link="">Maria Alzira Roque Gameiro (MD009) reads aloud the acknowledgement she wrote in Minderico for her Master Thesis on museology. </Description>
  <MDGroup>
     <Actors>
           <Name>Sabine Wurm</Name>
           <FullName>Sabine Wurm</FullName>
        </Actor>
      </Actors>
    </MDGroup>
   </METATRANSCRIPT:METATRANSCRIPT>
    <imdi xmlns="http://www.mpi.nl/IMDI/Schema/IMDI" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" FormatId="IMDI 3.03" Originator="" Type="SESSION" Version="1" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.mpi.nl/IMDI/Schema/IMDI">
     <Session>      
     <MDGroup>
     <Actors>
        <Actor>
           <Name/>
           <FullName/>
        </Actor>
        <Actor>
           <Name/>
           <FullName/>
        </Actor>
        <Actor>
           <Name/>
           <FullName/>
        </Actor>
        <Actor>
           <Name/>
           <FullName/>
        </Actor>
     </Actors>
  </MDGroup>      
  </Session>
  </imdi>

The ideia is to move each Actor inside imdi, and insert it after the first Actor inside METATRANSCRIPT:METATRANSCRIPT. This way i will have all actors in the same parent (METATRANSCRIPT)

My code:

Get-ChildItem -Path 'C:\Scripts\Source\' -Recurse -Include "*.xml" -File| ForEach-Object{

[xml]$xml = Get-Content $_.FullName;
$xml.imdi.Session.MDGroup.Actors
...
...
$xml.Save($_.FullName)}

My issue is :

how can i select and move each node, before using insertafter() method ? Thanks a lot for any help on this. I don't know how to start.

Expected Output:

<METATRANSCRIPT:METATRANSCRIPT xmlns:METATRANSCRIPT="http://www.mpi.nl/IMDI/Schema/IMDI" xmlns="http://www.mpi.nl/IMDI/Schema/IMDI" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"  ArchiveHandle="hdl:2196/00-0000-0000-0013-2CB3-2" Date="2012-02-08" FormatId="IMDI 3.0"  Originator="Editor - Profile:local/SESSION.Profile.xml" Type="SESSION" Version="3"  xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.mpi.nl/IMDI/Schema/IMDI ./IMDI_3.0.xsd">
 <Session>
 <Name>Acknowledgement</Name>
 <Title>Acknowledgement written by Maria Alzira Roque Gameira in her Master's Thesis</Title>
 <Date>2009-09-16</Date>
 <Description LanguageId="ISO639-3:eng" Link="">Maria Alzira Roque Gameiro (MD009) reads aloud the acknowledgement she wrote in Minderico for her Master Thesis on museology. </Description>
 <MDGroup>
 <Actors>
   <Actor>
       <Name>Sabine Wurm</Name>
       <FullName>Sabine Wurm</FullName>
    </Actor>
       <Actor>
       <Name/>
       <FullName/>
    </Actor>
    <Actor>
       <Name/>
       <FullName/>
    </Actor>
    <Actor>
       <Name/>
       <FullName/>
    </Actor>
    <Actor>
       <Name/>
       <FullName/>
    </Actor>
  </Actors>
 </MDGroup>
 </Session>
 </METATRANSCRIPT:METATRANSCRIPT>

Answer 1

EDIT:

I'm going to leave the answer below so the children of the future will know what not to do, but here's the update:

TIL that cut-and-paste does exist - see dialog with @mklement0.

Unrelated to the issue of cut-and-paste, if you look at @mklement0's answer, you'll note that he uses dot notation to select elements within the xml document, while I use xpath. In certain situations where elements are buried 10 (or even more) layers deep under <root>, xpath may be a better tool; compare $xml.Root.imdi.Session.MDGroup.Actors.Actor with $xml.SelectNodes("//imdi//Actor"). I know that some (many?) people downright loath xpath, but I personally feel more mentally comfortable using it.

So in @mklement0's honor, here's his solution, translated to xpath:

Replace the long foreach below with:

$nodes | ForEach-Object { 
  $destination.AppendChild($_)   
}

and it's done!

Original answer - the first paragraph has proven wrong....

Unfortunately, there's no "cut and paste" method in PS (that I know of), so you have to do it the long way - find the targets, copy them, insert them at the destination and then go back to the source and delete them.

Something along the lines of:

$source = $xml.SelectSingleNode("//imdi")
$nodes = $xml.SelectNodes("//imdi//Actor")
$destination = $xml.SelectSingleNode(".//*[name()='Session']//*[name()='Actors']")

foreach ($node in $nodes)
{

$actor = $xml.CreateElement("Actor")

$name = $xml.CreateElement('Name')
$fullname = $xml.CreateElement('FullName')

$nam = $node.SelectSingleNode('./Name')
$fnam = $node.SelectSingleNode('./FullName')

$actor.AppendChild($name).set_InnerText($nam.InnerText)
$actor.AppendChild($fullname).set_InnerText($fnam.InnerText)
$destination.AppendChild($actor)
}

$xml.doc.RemoveChild($source)

This should output what you need.

Answer 2

PowerShell's helpful adaptation of the XML DOM, which reflects child elements and attributes as properties of [xml](System.Xml.XmlDocument) documents and their nodes, still also allows you access to the native members of the underlying .NET types:

That is, you can drill down to the desired element(s) using the convenient dot notation (e.g., $xml.Root.METATRANSCRIPT.Session.MDGroup.Actors) while still being able to call the methods of the underlying System.Xml.XmlNode type such as .AppendChild().

Note that intra-document use of .AppendChild() implicitly moves the node being appended from its original location, so this call is all that is needed, except for potentially using .RemoveNode() on then-childless parent nodes.

The following assumes that your real XML document has a document root element named <Root> (your input XML is an invalid XML fragment):

Get-ChildItem 'C:\Scripts\Source\' -Recurse -File -Filter *.xml | ForEach-Object{

  # Read the file into an XML DOM.
  [xml] $xml = Get-Content -Raw $_.FullName

  # Move all <Actor> elements from below <imdi> to below <METATRANSCRIPT>
  $xml.Root.imdi.Session.MDGroup.Actors.Actor | ForEach-Object { 
    $xml.Root.METATRANSCRIPT.Session.MDGroup.Actors.AppendChild($_) 
  }

  # Remove the now virtually empty <imdi> element, if desired.
  $xml.Root.RemoveChild($xml.Root.imdi)

  # Save the modified document.
  $xml.Save($_.FullName)
}

Note that $xml.Root.imdi.Session.MDGroup.Actors.Actor returns an array of all child elements named Actor, all elements of which are then one by one appended as children to the target element via the .AppendChild() method.