How to remove/delete/modify XML elements from an XML document using Golang without using structs

I am using Golang for an API gateway and we need to remove certain XML elements from documents.

We are unable to use structs/marshalling as the XML structures are huge and variable - but we consistently need to remove a few XML elements based on their name/path

I have tried to "walk" the XML document and "skip" certain elements based on their name.

My example is here, but I am getting errors: https://go.dev/play/p/LJtlYXWvJ_d

panic: xml: end tag </age> does not match start tag <person>

I must be doing something wrong, and most examples I can find use Structs to do this.

If you look at this output:

End Tag of  age  parent name is  age

It gives a good clue. Then look right here:

		case xml.EndElement:
			println("End Tag of ", t.Name.Local, " parent name is ", parent.Name.Local)
			if skip && t.Name == parent.Name {
				skip = false
				parent = xml.StartElement{}
			}
			if !skip {
				println("Encoding End Element ", t.Name.Local, " buffer is ", buf.String())
				err := encoder.EncodeToken(token)
				if err != nil {
					panic(err)
				}
			}
			encoder.Flush()

From the output we can see that skip && t.Name == parent.Name will be true. We toggle skip to be false and reset parent. Then we proceed to check if !skip . We just set skip to false, so we attempt to encode the token. But we were supposed to skip that token!

The fix is simple: just add a break to that case condition.

			if skip && t.Name == parent.Name {

				skip = false
				parent = xml.StartElement{}
				break
			}

gives (debugging output removed):

		<people>
			<person>
				<name>John</name>
				
			</person>
			<person>
				<name>Jane</name>
				
			</person>
		</people>