The code in the following example fetches and copies the custId attribute from this XML data:

   <invalidLoanApplication xmlns="http://samples.otn.com">
      <application xmlns = "http://samples.otn.com/XPath/autoloan">
         <customer custId = "111" >
            <name>
               Mike Olive
            </name>
            ...
         </customer>
         ...
      </application>
   </invalidLoanApplication>

The BPEL 1.1 code in the following example selects the custId attribute of the customer field and assigns it to the variable custId:

<assign>
   <!-- get the custId attribute and assign to variable custId -->
   <copy>
      <from variable="input" part="payload"
         query="/tns:invalidLoanApplication/autoloan:application
                /autoloan:customer/@custId"/>
      <to variable="custId"/>
   </copy>
</assign>

The following example shows the equivalent syntax in BPEL 2.0 for selecting the custId attribute of the customer field and assigning it to the variable custId:

<assign>
<copy>
<from>$input.payload/autoloan:application/autoloan:customer/@custId</from>
<to>$custId</to>
</copy>
</assign>

The namespace prefixes in this example are not integral to the example.The WSDL file defines a customer to have a type in which custId is defined as an attribute, as shown in the following example:

<complexType name="CustomerProfileType">
   <sequence>
      <element name="name" type="string"/>
      ...
   </sequence>
   <attribute name="custId" type="string"/>
</complexType>