How to read an XML file using PowerShell and filter the required data

Reading XML with PowerShell is really easy.

Suppose your xml file looks similar to this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> 
<breakfast_menu> 
    <food> 
        <food>Belgian Waffles</food>
        <price>$5.95</price>
        <description>Two of our famous Belgian Waffles with plenty of real maple syrup</description>
        <calories>650</calories>
    </food>
    <food> 
        <food>Fried Egg</food>
        <price>$1.80</price>
        <description>blahblah</description>
        <calories>3500</calories>
    </food>
</breakfast_menu>

You simply read and have PowerShell parse the file into an object, using this

[xml]$xml = Get-Content 'D:\Testing\TestcasesOutput\1ac.xml'

Next, you can use the properties of this $xml object to get whatever it is you want to extract from it:

For instance, loop through all <food> items and output the information you want

$xml.breakfast_menu.food | ForEach-Object {
    [PSCustomObject]@{
        'MenuItem' = $_.food
        'Price'    = $_.price
    }
}

results in this output:

MenuItem        Price
--------        -----
Belgian Waffles $5.95
Fried Egg       $1.80

Or select just the one the item for 'Belgian Waffles':

$xml.breakfast_menu.food | Where-Object { $_.food -eq 'Belgian Waffles' } | 
                           Select-Object @{Name = 'MenuItem'; Expression = {$_.food}}, Price

outputs:

MenuItem        price
--------        -----
Belgian Waffles $5.95

If all you are after is the price for a certain food item, you can do this:

$xml.breakfast_menu.food | Where-Object { $_.food -eq 'Belgian Waffles' } | 
                           Select-Object -ExpandProperty Price

or even shorten that code:

($xml.breakfast_menu.food | Where-Object { $_.food -eq 'Belgian Waffles' }).price

Hope that explains

Edit

If you need to do this on multiple xml files and these files are inside the same root path, you could loop through using Get-ChildItem to get the xml files and process them like in the examples I gave.

Get-ChildItem -Path 'ROOTFOLDER OF THE FOLDERS WHERE THE XML FILES ARE KEPT' -Filter '*.xml' -File -Recurse | 
    ForEach-Object {
        [xml]$xml = Get-Content -Path $_.FullName
        # in this example simply output the menu items and their price for each xml file
        foreach ($item in $xml.breakfast_menu.food) {
            [PSCustomObject]@{
                'File'     = $_.FullName    # added the file FullName so you know where the item came from
                'MenuItem' = $item.food
                'Price'    = $item.price
            }
        }
    }

Or from several locations:

$folders = 'D:\Testing\TestcasesOutput\1ac7b5a0-2d62-403c-8394-5bd33330cbe7',
           'D:\Testing\TestcasesOutput\227c619a-b7d1-4da6-8fe5-f2c923ddcb7a',
           'D:\Testing\TestcasesOutput\d4370ae1-643f-4c44-ba41-7f640afcc276'

$result = Get-ChildItem -Path $folders -Filter '*.xml' -File | 
    ForEach-Object {
        [xml]$xml = Get-Content -Path $_.FullName
        # in this example simply output the menu items and their price for each xml file
        foreach ($item in $xml.breakfast_menu.food) {
            [PSCustomObject]@{
                'File'     = $_.FullName
                'MenuItem' = $item.food
                'Price'    = $item.price
            }
        }
    }

#output to screen:
$result

# output to CSV
$result | Export-Csv -Path 'PATH AND FILENAME FOR THE OUTPUT CSV FILE' -NoTypeInformation