Replacing entire node using web.config transforms resulting in error

Question

I can't quite figure out what I'm doing wrong here. I have a node in a web config:

<configuration xmlns:xdt="http://schemas.microsoft.com/XML-Document-Transform">
    ...
    <runtime>
       <assemblyBinding xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1">
           <dependentAssembly>
              <assemblyIdentity name="Newtonsoft.Json" publicKeyToken="30ad4fe6b2a6aeed" />
              <bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-6.0.0.0" newVersion="6.0.0.0" />
           </dependentAssembly>
           ....

and I want to replace this with:

<dependentAssembly>
    <assemblyIdentity name="Newtonsoft.Json" publicKeyToken="30ad4fe6b2a6aeed" />
    <bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-8.0.0.0" newVersion="9.0.0.0" />
</dependentAssembly>

using MsBuild TransformXml. I can't quite figure out the correct syntax for the xdt attributes though. The following (which looks correct to me) :

<dependentAssembly xdt:Transform="Replace" 
                                    xdt:Locator="Condition(param/@name='Newtonsoft.Json'">
    <assemblyIdentity name="Newtonsoft.Json" publicKeyToken="30ad4fe6b2a6aeed" />
    <bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-8.0.0.0" newVersion="9.0.0.0" />
</dependentAssembly>

Is resulting in an error:

XmlNodeException : Transform and Locator attributes must contain only a type name, or a type name followed by a list of attributes in parentheses.

what am I missing here?

I can't alter the original BTW, this must be done using transforms.

That results in the error `XmlNodeException : '/configuration/runtime/_defaultNamespace:assemblyBinding/_defaultNamespace:dependentAssembly[./_defaultNamespace:assemblyIdentity/‌@name='Newtonsoft.Js‌on']' has an invalid token.` @alex. Thanks — Liam, Aug 30 '16 at 09:14
hmm, the only place i can find the error you're originally getting is - https://github.com/micahlmartin/XmlTransformer/blob/master/src/XmlTransformer/XmlElementContext.cs#L292 - which is a 3rd party parser...? — Alex, Aug 30 '16 at 09:18

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 30 '16 at 10:09

Attribute name='Newtonsoft.Json' is located in a parent element named assemblyIdentity, so I'm not sure why param/@name. The correct XPath expression to test if child element named -ignoring namespaces- 'assemblyIdentity' has attribute name value equals 'Newtonsoft.Json' would be as follow :

xdt:Locator="Condition(*[local-name()='assemblyIdentity']/@name='Newtonsoft.Json')"

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 16 '20 at 09:03

The problem basically the name space. Define this namespace in your xdt file.

<configuration xmlns:asm="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" xmlns:xdt="http://schemas.microsoft.com/XML-Document-Transform">

Use the new namespace like this:

<asm:assemblyBinding>
  <asm:dependentAssembly xdt:Transform="Replace" xdt:Locator="Condition(asm:assemblyIdentity/@name='Newtonsoft.Json')" >
    <asm:assemblyIdentity name="Newtonsoft.Json" publicKeyToken="30ad4fe6b2a6aeed" />
    <asm:bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-6.0.0.0" newVersion="6.0.0.0" />
  </asm:dependentAssembly>
</asm:assemblyBinding>

I think this is a bit more elegant than local-name() version.

Replacing entire node using web.config transforms resulting in error

2 Answers2