"TypeError: Argument 'element' has incorrect type (expected lxml.etree._Element, got _ElementStringResult)" when trying to retrieve attribute value

[Lx]

I'm using the following Ansible task in an attempt to retrieve a value from a remote-side XML file:

- name: try to get existing XML value
  xml: >
    file=/home/XXX/settings.xml
    xpath='/settings/setting[@id="setting.setting_key"]/@value'
    print_match=true
  register: existing_xml_value

The task fails with this output:

TASK: [playbook | try to get existing XML value] ************************ 
failed: [XXX] => {"failed": true, "parsed": false}
BECOME-SUCCESS-XXX
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/XXX/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-XXX/xml", line 1937, in <module>
    main()
  File "/home/XXX/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-XXX/xml", line 290, in main
    print_match(x, xpath, module)
  File "/home/XXX/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-XXX/xml", line 100, in print_match
    match_xpaths.append(tree.getpath(m))
TypeError: Argument 'element' has incorrect type (expected lxml.etree._Element, got _ElementStringResult)
OpenSSH_XXX, OpenSSL XXX XXX
debug1: Reading configuration data /home/XXX/.ssh/config
debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config
debug1: /etc/ssh/ssh_config line 19: Applying options for *
debug1: auto-mux: Trying existing master
debug1: mux_client_request_session: master session id: 2
Shared connection to XXX closed.

I may be doing it wrong as there's no explicit documentation at this time for retrieving actual values (as opposed to counts). Is this operation supported?

I would guess that the OpenSSH output in the module error output is a module bug, since no other module I've worked with has such output when it fails.

[Lx]

(I've referenced this issue from a GitHub Gist for an XML lookup plug-in.)

[jdatx]

I've also not gotten this to work either

[dagwieers]

The xml module is upstream now (and ships with Ansible v2.4).

Please close this issue, and retest against the new upstream xml module. If needed, open a new issue at: https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues

[dagwieers]

I would need to have the content of the XML file in order to test what you're doing.

[cmprescott]

Closing issue since hasn't been addressed in 2 years.