Mule ESB - How to read xml payload content?

In this blog, I'm going to explain the way we can access the XML payload content and assign into a variable.

For an example, we will assume that mule flow received a xml message as below

<persons>
    <person>
        <name>Tharanga</name>
        <city>Colombo</city>
        <address>
            <street>1st Cross Street</street>
            <postalCode>10250</postalCode>
            <country>Sri Lanka</country>
        </address>
    </person>
</persons>

If we need to read the name of the person, have to write a mule expression as below

#[xpath://persons/person/name]

Since this is a xml payload, we need to use the xpath prefix to access the payload.

I used below sample flow to check this scenario.

<mule xmlns:http="http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/http" xmlns="http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/core" xmlns:doc="http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/documentation"
 xmlns:spring="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans" 
 xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
 xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-current.xsd
http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/core http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/core/current/mule.xsd
http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/http http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/http/current/mule-http.xsd">
    <http:listener-config name="HTTP_Listener_Configuration" host="0.0.0.0" port="8089" doc:name="HTTP Listener Configuration"/>
    <flow name="demo-readpayloadFlow">
        <http:listener config-ref="HTTP_Listener_Configuration" path="/payload" doc:name="HTTP"/>
        <set-variable variableName="messageid" value="#[xpath://persons/person/name]" doc:name="Variable"/>
        <logger message="#[flowVars.messageid]" level="INFO" doc:name="Logger"/>
        <set-payload value="#[flowVars.messageid]" doc:name="Set Payload"/>
    </flow>
</mule>

When invoking the flow, we can see the value in the console according to the above sample.

INFO  2017-07-21 09:24:16,065 [[demo-readpayload].HTTP_Listener_Configuration.worker.01] org.mule.api.processor.LoggerMessageProcessor: Tharanga

Likewise, you can read the xml payload.

If the payload comes with the namespaces, you need to define the namespaces in the mulexml:namespace-manager tag as below

<mulexml:namespace-manager includeConfigNamespaces="true">
 <mulexml:namespace prefix="abc" uri="http://sample.lk/test" />
</mulexml:namespace-manager>

For an example, we will assume that payload comes as follows

<persons xmlns:abc="http://sample.lk/test">
    <abc:person>
        <abc:name>Tharanga</abc:name>
        <abc:city>Colombo</abc:city>
        <abc:address>
            <abc:street>1st Cross Street</abc:street>
            <abc:postalCode>10250</abc:postalCode>
            <abc:country>Sri Lanka</abc:country>
        </abc:address>
    </abc:person>
</persons>

And then need to change the mule expression as below

#[xpath://persons/abc:person/abc:name]

Likewise, you can read the xml payload when comes with the namespaces.

Enjoy..!!