Function to extract a single text node value from an XML string. Note this version will only extract the first value if more than one exists.

It uses a Regular Expression pattern <node>(.-)</node> to locate the text node where:

<node>		is a literal string node name prefix
( )	[parentheses]	enclose the matching captured text node value
.	[period]	represents any single character
-	[hyphen]	is 0 or more repetitions of [period] for the shortest possible match
</node>		is a literal string node name suffix

Code

-- Get Text from XML Data using Node name
function StrGetXmlText(strData,strNode)
	local strPrefix = "<"..strNode..">"
	local strSuffix = "</"..strNode..">"
	local strRegExp = strPrefix.."(.-)"..strSuffix
	return strData:match(strRegExp)
end -- function StrGetXmlText
 
-- Get Text from XML Data using Node name (compact version)
function strGetXmlText(strData,strNode)
	return strData:match("<"..strNode..">(.-)</"..strNode..">")
end -- function strGetXmlText

 

Usage

strXML = [[
<ResultSet version="1.0">
 <quality>85</quality>
 <latitude>38.898717</latitude>
 <longitude>-77.035974</longitude>
 <offsetlat>38.898590</offsetlat>
 <offsetlon>-77.035971</offsetlon>
 <latitude>52.0</latitude>
 <longitude>0.0</longitude>
</ResultSet>
]]
 
strLat = StrGetXmlText(strXML,"latitude")
strLng = strGetXmlText(strXML,"longitude")
print(strLat)
print(strLng)
-- strLat = 38.898717
-- strLng = -77.035974