XPath syntax for e-invoicing response field mapping

An overview of using XPath syntax for mapping fields in e-invoicing responses, including examples and supported service providers.

The XML Path Language (XPath) syntax is used in the Field Path field in e-invoicing response field mappings. An XPath string indicates an XML node in the XML-formatted response payload from the service provider or the XML file extracted from the tax authority.

E-invoicing service providers that support XPath syntax are as follows:

Avalara
Sovos

For more information about e-invoicing response field mapping, see the following articles:

The later sections of this article use the following snippet as an example to help you understand the XPath syntax. This snippet is extracted from the Sovos’ response payload sample.

<ApplicationResponse>
    <ext:UBLExtensions>
        <ext:UBLExtension>
            <ext:ExtensionContent>
                <ad:AdditionalData>
                    <ad:Field name="SdiId" type="FormalIdentifier">a2c73…10b31
                    </ad:Field>
                    …
                </ad:AdditionalData>
            </ext:ExtensionContent>
        </ext:UBLExtension>
    </ext:UBLExtensions>
    …
    <cac:DocumentResponse>
        …
        <cac:DocumentReference>
            <cbc:ID>JqYyq…cKje</cbc:ID>
            <cbc:DocumentTypeCode>LegalCleared</cbc:DocumentTypeCode>
            <cac:Attachment>
                <cbc:EmbeddedDocumentBinaryObject>ZXlKaGJH…nN3c=
                </cbc:EmbeddedDocumentBinaryObject>
            </cac:Attachment>
        </cac:DocumentReference>
        <cac:DocumentReference>
            <cbc:ID>JqYyq…CUcs</cbc:ID>
            <cbc:DocumentTypeCode>Legal</cbc:DocumentTypeCode>
            <cac:Attachment>
                <cbc:EmbeddedDocumentBinaryObject>ZXlKaGJH…kQQ==
                </cbc:EmbeddedDocumentBinaryObject>
            </cac:Attachment>
        </cac:DocumentReference>
    </cac:DocumentResponse>
</ApplicationResponse>

Commonly used expressions

The following table lists some commonly used expressions in XPath:


Expression	Description	Example	Result
/	Selects from the root node	/ApplicationResponse	Selects the root node `ApplicationResponse`
/	Selects from the root node	/ApplicationResponse/cac:DocumentResponse	Selects all `cac:DocumentResponse` nodes that are children of `ApplicationResponse`
//	Selects nodes from the current node that match the selection no matter where they are	//cac:DocumentReference	Selects all `cac:DocumentReference` nodes in the document
//		/ApplicationResponse//cac:DocumentReference	Selects all `cac:DocumentReference` nodes that are descendants of the root node `ApplicationResponse`
@	Selects attributes	@type	Selects all attributes that are named `type`
[]	Applies a filter to the current node	//cac:DocumentReference[cbc:DocumentTypeCode=DocumentTypeCode]	Selects all `cac:DocumentReference` nodes that have a `cbc:DocumentTypeCode` child node with the value of `DocumentTypeCode`
[]	Applies a filter to the current node	//ad:Field[@name=’SdiId’]	Selects all `ad:Field` nodes that have a `name` attribute with the value of `SdiId`
*	Matches any element node	//cac:DocumentReference/*	Selects all the children of `cac:DocumentReference`
text()	Selects the text of the current node	//ad:Field/text()	Selects the text of each `ad:Field` node

Note: For more information about XPath syntax, see XPath Tutorial.

Field path examples

The following table lists the field path examples for some commonly used fields:


Field name	Field path	Selected content
EInvoiceFile	//cac:DocumentReference[cbc:DocumentTypeCode='LegalCleared']/cac:Attachment/cbc:EmbeddedDocumentBinaryObject/text()	ZXlKaGJH…nN3c=
ReferenceNumber	//ad:Field[@name='SdiId']/text()	a2c73…10b31

See the following articles for more examples of each e-invoicing service provider:

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XPath syntax for e-invoicing response field mapping

Commonly used expressions

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