XML parsing in oracle pl/sql

Question

I am trying to parse this XML in PL/SQL

Answer 1

I think there are two things you have wrong here:

• Firstly, your XPath expression //@GovernmentCode/ is wrong. It should not have a trailing /, and you don't want the @ either because GovernmentCode is an element, not an attribute.

• Secondly, you must specify the XML namespace declaration in your call to EXTRACTVALUE as well as in your call to EXTRACT.

Making these changes leaves you with the following code. I gave it a quick test, and it seemed to work:

SELECT EXTRACTVALUE (VALUE (xml_list), '//GovernmentCode', 'xmlns="http://www.irs.gov/efile"') AS SysID
  INTO lv_transid      
  FROM TABLE (
            XMLSEQUENCE (
               EXTRACT (in_xmlclob, '/AckTransmission/Acknowledgement',
                        'xmlns="http://www.irs.gov/efile"'))) xml_list;   

Answer 2

You can use regular expression to replace xmlns to empty string... then you can read the xml column

xml:= regexp_replace(xml,'(xmlns:[a-z]|xmlns).*?(\"|\'').*?(\"|\'')',' ');