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Using the XPath Filter

This component defines an XPath-based message filter. Internally, these components uses a MessageFilter that wraps an instance of AbstractXPathMessageSelector.

See Filter for further details.

to use the XPath filter you must, at a minimum, provide an XPath expression either by declaring the xpath-expression element or by referencing an XPath Expression in the xpath-expression-ref attribute.

If the provided XPath expression evaluates to a boolean value, no further configuration parameters are necessary. However, if the XPath expression evaluates to a String, you should set the match-value attribute, against which the evaluation result is matched.

match-type has three options:

  • exact: Correspond to equals on java.lang.String. The underlying implementation uses a StringValueTestXPathMessageSelector

  • case-insensitive: Correspond to equals-ignore-case on java.lang.String. The underlying implementation uses a StringValueTestXPathMessageSelector

  • regex: Matches operations one java.lang.String. The underlying implementation uses a RegexTestXPathMessageSelector

When providing a 'match-type' value of 'regex', the value provided with the match-value attribute must be a valid regular expression.

The following example shows all the available attributes for the xpath-filter element:

<int-xml:xpath-filter discard-channel=""                      (1)
                      id=""                                   (2)
                      input-channel=""                        (3)
                      match-type="exact"                      (4)
                      match-value=""                          (5)
                      output-channel=""                       (6)
                      throw-exception-on-rejection="false"    (7)
                      xpath-expression-ref="">                (8)
    <int-xml:xpath-expression ... />                          (9)
    <int:poller ... />                                        (10)
</int-xml:xpath-filter>
1 Message channel where you want rejected messages to be sent. Optional.
2 ID for the underlying bean definition. Optional.
3 The receiving message channel of this endpoint. Optional.
4 Type of match to apply between the XPath evaluation result and the match-value. The default is exact. Optional.
5 String value to be matched against the XPath evaluation result. If you do not set this attribute, the XPath evaluation must produce a boolean result. Optional.
6 The channel to which messages that matched the filter criteria are dispatched. Optional.
7 By default, this property is set to false and rejected messages (those did not match the filter criteria) are silently dropped. However, if set to true, message rejection results in an error condition and an exception being propagated upstream to the caller. Optional.
8 Reference to an XPath expression instance to evaluate.
9 This child element sets the XPath expression to be evaluated. If you do not include this element, you must set the xpath-expression-ref attribute. Also, you can include only one xpath-expression element.
10 A poller to use with the XPath filter. Optional.