How to select an XmlElement based on an attribute value?

Question

Say I have the following xml

   
      Gambardella, Matthew           


        

Answer 1

You could filter the books using Where-Object, or you could try XPath. Here's two examples:

Dot-navigation

$bookid = 'bk102'
$myxml = [xml](Get-Content '.\New Text Document.txt')

$node = $myxml.catalog.book | Where-Object { $_.id -eq $bookid }
$node

id                                                         author
--                                                         ------
bk102                                                      Ralls, Kim

XPath

$bookid = 'bk102'
$myxml = [xml](Get-Content '.\New Text Document.txt')

$node = $myxml.SelectSingleNode("catalog/book[@id='$bookid']")
$node

id                                                         author
--                                                         ------
bk102                                                      Ralls, Kim