Whatever message this page gives is out now! Go check it out!

XmlSearch

Last update:
May 18, 2026

Description

Uses an XPath language expression to search an XML document object.

Returns

The results of the XPath search. For details, see Usage.

Category

XML functions

Function syntax

XmlSearch(xml, xpath, params)

See also

cfxml, IsXML, XmlChildPos, XmlParse, XmlTransform; Using XML and WDDX in the Developing ColdFusion Applications

History

ColdFusion 10: Added support for XPath 2.0 syntax and for passing variables to XPath expressions.
ColdFusion 8: Added support for returning any valid XPath result, not just arrays of XML object nodes.
ColdFusion MX 7: Added support for attribute searches.
ColdFusion MX: Added this function.

Parameters

Parameter
Description
params
Optional. A struct that contains key-value pairs used by the XPath expression.When the xml argument is a string instead of an XML document object, the same struct is also consulted during the XML pre-parse step for parser options such as:
  • ALLOWDOCTYPEDECLARATION
  • ALLOWEXTERNALENTITIES
  • ENTITYEXPANSIONLIMIT
<cfscript> 
 params = structNew(); 
 params["test"] = "food"; 
 </cfscript> 
 <!--- find all nodes with element name as passed by variable test ---> 
 <cfset result = xmlSearch(xmldoc,"/breakfast_menu/*[local-name() eq $test]", params)>
xml
XML document object
xpath
XPath expression

Usage

The XmlSearch function attempts to return the values returned by the search whenever possible. For example, if the XPath expression returns a Boolean, the CFML variable is assigned a true or false value .The following table lists XPath expression result data types and how they are represented in the CFML return value.
XPath return type
ColdFusion representation
Boolean
Boolean
Null
"" (empty string)
Number
Number
String
String
NodeSet
Array of XML nodes
Result Tree Fragment
Array of XML nodes
Results that are Unknown or have an unresolved variable in the expression throw an error.XPath is specified by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). For detailed information on XPath, including XPath expression syntax, see the W3C website at www.w3.org/TR/xpath.
String input and DOCTYPE handling
If the xml argument is an XML document object, XmlSearch() searches the parsed document object.If the xml argument is an XML string, ColdFusion performs a pre-parse step before evaluating the XPath expression. Starting in this release, that pre-parse rejects XML containing a <!DOCTYPE ...> declaration unless params.ALLOWDOCTYPEDECLARATION = true.Use this option only for trusted XML strings that are known to require a DOCTYPE declaration.
<!--- Searching a string containing XML with a DOCTYPE declaration --->
<cfset params = {
    ALLOWDOCTYPEDECLARATION = true,
    ALLOWEXTERNALENTITIES = false,
    ENTITYEXPANSIONLIMIT = 1000
}>

<cfset result = XmlSearch(myXmlString, "/root/item", params)>

Example

The following example extracts the elements named last, which contain employee last names, from an XML file, and displays the names .The employeesimple . xml file contains the following XML:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> 
<employee> 
<!-- A list of employees --> 
<name EmpType="Regular"> 
<first>Almanzo</first> 
<last>Wilder</last> 
</name> 
<name EmpType="Contract"> 
<first>Laura</first> 
<last>Ingalls</last> 
</name> 
</employee>
The CFML file contains the following lines:
<cfscript> 
myxmldoc = XmlParse("C:\CFusionMX7\wwwroot\examples\employeesimple.xml"); 
selectedElements = XmlSearch(myxmldoc, "/employee/name/last"); 
for (i = 1; i LTE ArrayLen(selectedElements); i = i + 1) 
writeoutput(selectedElements[i].XmlText & "<br>"); 
</cfscript>

Share this page

Was this page helpful?
We're glad. Tell us how this page helped.
We're sorry. Can you tell us what didn't work for you?
Thank you for your feedback. Your response will help improve this page.

On this page