Groovy, updating XML with XmlSlurper

Sometimes you don't want only to parse XML, but also modify XML with XmlSlurper.


XmlSlurper.parse(...) returns an object of type GPathResult

To change the content of a node, use replaceBody()


For instance, with the XML file of the previous post, you can change a value of an element this way:

import groovy.xml.XmlUtil

/*
 * Lookup customization file
 * Search //cus:envValueAssignments[(cus:envValueAssignments/xt:owner/xt:type/text() == $1 
 *          AND //cus:envValueAssignments/xt:owner/xt:path/text() = $2)][xt:envValueType == $3]
 * and replace their xt:value with $4
 *  
 */

def customizations = new XmlSlurper().parse("ALSBCustomizationFile.xml").declareNamespace(xt: 'http://www.bea.com/wli/config/xmltypes',xsi: 'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance', cus : 'http://www.bea.com/wli/config/customizations')

//println XmlUtil.serialize( customizations )

customizations.'cus:customization'.each {
    println "UNO"
 if (it.'@xsi:type' == "cus:EnvValueCustomizationType") {
  println "TROVATO"
  for (item in it.'cus:envValueAssignments') {
   if (item.'xt:envValueType' == 'Service URI') {
    println "ITEM Service URI, before is " + item.'xt:value'
    item.'xt:value'.replaceBody("ciao")
    println "ITEM Service URI, after  is " + item.'xt:value'
   }
  }
 }
}


println XmlUtil.serialize( customizations )

The document is actually updated the second time you print it.

It was tough to figure this out, the official article on "updating XML with XmlSlurper" suggests to simply assign:

item.'xt:value' = "ciao"

but it simply doesn't work