[XML Records] Attributes vs Child nodes

Gonçalo Borrêga

Question

The XML Records extension allows some degree of configuration in the way it exports xml. But some of those changes cannot (currently) be done via the configuration itself. It may require proper naming of attributes or even some post processing of the xml file...

Pedro Miranda wrote:

Hi everyone,

i was looking at the example given and i was started "playing" with the use of configuration to understand it better and i was wondering it it's possible to add attributes with this file and how you do it.

For example, taking the given structure

"<Group testAttribute="TestAttribute">
   <Name>The group name</Name>
   <CreationDateTime>2012-12-27T14:54:12</CreationDateTime>
   <SimpleDate>2012-12-29</SimpleDate>
   <StartTime>15:54:12</StartTime>
   <Decimal>1.12345678</Decimal>
   <HomeAddress>
        <Street>The home street</Street>
        <HouseNumber>15</HouseNumber>
   </HomeAddress>...."

i wanna add the attribute Type="Date" to the CreationDateTime record so it turns like this:

"<Group testAttribute="TestAttribute">
   <Name>The group name</Name>
   <CreationDateTime Type="Date">2012-12-27T14:54:12</CreationDateTime>
   <SimpleDate>2012-12-29</SimpleDate>
   <StartTime>15:54:12</StartTime>
   <Decimal>1.12345678</Decimal>
   <HomeAddress>
        <Street>The home street</Street>
        <HouseNumber>15</HouseNumber>
   </HomeAddress>...."

This cannot be done in the configuration itself.
You'll need to create a new structure in SS, named CreationDateTime, which is a record with 2 attributes:
- Attr_Type (string)
- Cont_Content (date)
and add a new attribute to the Group structure that is a Record of the CreationDateTime structure type.

How does it work?
When serializing, the XMLRecords extension will look into the several attributes and process them in sequence.
1. It finds an attribute named CreationDateTime in the Group structure - It will start the new element:
<CreationDateTime
2. It understands it is a record, and will drill down to its attributes
3. It finds an attribute named Attr_Type. Because the name of the attribute starts with Attr_ (the default - but overridable - prefix that indicates it should export it as an attribute instead of a child element) it exports it as an attribute:
<CreationDateTime Type="XXXX"
4. It finds an attribute named Cont_Contents. Because the name is the reserved name Cont_ it sets the contents of the parent record, instead of creating a child element named <Contents>
<CreationDateTime Type="XXXX">2012-12-27T14:54:12</CreationDateTime>

Explore the example in detail... It shows pratically everything that is possible to achieve with the configurations. The rest, must be done through naming conventions at the SS structure. This may require you to create some intermediate structures used just to match the exact XML you want to export, and do some data mapping between your source data and the structure that maps the XML you want to export.

29 Dec 2012

Pedro Miranda

Thanks for your explanation and help Gonçalo.

I have another question...imagine i have a structure like the one below.

<Group>
...
      <Location>
           <City>Lisbon</Type>
           <Country>Portugal</Country>
           <DateTime DateType="EarliestDeparture" Type="Date">2012-12-27T17:09:45</DateTime>
      </Location>
      <Location>
           <City>Amsterdam</City>
           <Country>Holland</Country>
           <DateTime DateType="EstimatedArrival" Type="Date">2013-01-27T10:00:00</DateTime>
        </Location>
...
</Group>

The first Location is a Record of the CreationDateTime_Start structure type (just like you told me before but with 2 attributes now) and the second is a Record of the CreationDateTime_Finish structure type, both created equally. My problem here is that if one of this dates is not supplied, i want the element DateTime to not appear in the Location Record, but i'm not being able to do so...if i don't pass a datetime value i get something like:

            <DateTime DateType="EstimatedArrival" Type="Date"> </DateTime>.

Is there a way of telling that if it's a null value to exclude the element, even if it has attributes? And yes, the "Exclude if Null" in the General Options is set to true.

Thanks,
Pedro Miranda

02 Jan 2013

1 reply

05 Jan 2013

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Gonçalo Borrêga

Pedro Miranda wrote:

I don't think that is possible with the current extension. You either need to change the extension to do what you need, or do some post processing (e.g. applying some xslt to remove elements with no content.

05 Jan 2013

Pedro Miranda

FYI,

and to be more accurate in the definition of my problem, I tried something similar but without attributes with a smiliar structure, as below:

<Group>
...
      <Location>
           <City>Lisbon</Type>
           <Country>Portugal</Country>
           <DateTime DateType="EarliestDeparture" Type="Date">2012-12-27T17:09:45</DateTime>
      </Location>
      <Location>
           <City></City>
           <Country></Country>
           <DateTime></DateTime>
        </Location>
...
</Group>

if i don't give the 2nd location any values, it should exclude this record but it isn't. It only excludes the elements inside the record. So instead of getting:

<Group>
...
      <Location>
           <City>Lisbon</Type>
           <Country>Portugal</Country>
           <DateTime DateType="EarliestDeparture" Type="Date">2012-12-27T17:09:45</DateTime>
      </Location>
...
</Group>

i'm getting:

<Group>
...
      <Location>
           <City>Lisbon</Type>
           <Country>Portugal</Country>
           <DateTime DateType="EarliestDeparture" Type="Date">2012-12-27T17:09:45</DateTime>
      </Location>
      <Location>
        </Location>
...
</Group>

03 Jan 2013

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05 Jan 2013

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Gonçalo Borrêga

Pedro Miranda wrote:

if i don't give the 2nd location any values, it should exclude this record but it isn't. It only excludes the elements inside the record.

I would say that is a bug... If you get the chance to fix it inside the extension please let me know and I will merge it to a new version. Otherwise, I'll try to check it when I have some time... (Or maybe the other guys in the component team can give it a look??)
As a workaround you can also post process it with a xslt to remove empty elements...

05 Jan 2013

Pedro Miranda

Another problem...in every element that is created with attributes, the value of this element has some "garbage" before and after the value. How can i remove it before creating the xml file?

Below is the example of the same generated file opened with notepad (1) and with a browser:

1- On notepad:
<DateTime DateType="EarliestDeparture" Type="Date">
2013-01-04T15:01:35
</DateTime>

2-On browser:
<DateTime Type="Date" DateType="EarliestDeparture"> 2013-01-04T15:01:35 </DateTime>

Thanks,
Pedro Miranda

04 Jan 2013

1 reply

12 Jun 2014

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Matthias Preuter

MVP

Pedro,

Did you find a solution for removing the 'garbage' in the value of an element?

Kind regards,
Matthias

Pedro Miranda wrote:

12 Jun 2014

Luís Teixeira

Hi,

Does anyone know how to solve the problem described by Pedro?

Thanks,

09 Feb 2018

Andre Goncalves

Hi there,

In my company we are also facing the same problem as Pedro.

Does anyone have a way to solve this garbage XMLRecords create?

Thanks.

André

08 Jun 2018

Lennart Kraak

Champion

Hi Andre,

I had the same problem not so long ago. I solved it using 2 regular expressions that remove the linebreak from the xml.

The first one finds the '>', the line break and then a new value that doesn't start with a '<'. It then removes that middle part, the linebreak:

So:

SyntaxEditor Code Snippet

"(>)(\s+[\r|\n|\r\n]\t+)([a-zA-Z0-9])"

The second one does the same, but then the other way arround, text - linebreak - </:

So for this I use:

SyntaxEditor Code Snippet

"([a-zA-Z0-9])(\s+[\r|\n|\r\n]\t+)(</)"

I hope this helps.

Goodluck!

08 Jun 2018

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08 Jun 2018

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Andre Goncalves

Lenmart,

Your solution worked like a charm. Many thanks for helping us out :)

If anyone needs this solution to work for English together with other foreign characters (like Chinese), you can use:

SyntaxEditor Code Snippet

"([\p{L}0-9])" instead of "([a-zA-Z0-9])"

André

Lennart Kraak wrote:

Hi Andre,

I had the same problem not so long ago. I solved it using 2 regular expressions that remove the linebreak from the xml.

The first one finds the '>', the line break and then a new value that doesn't start with a '<'. It then removes that middle part, the linebreak:

So:

SyntaxEditor Code Snippet

"(>)(\s+[\r|\n|\r\n]\t+)([a-zA-Z0-9])"

The second one does the same, but then the other way arround, text - linebreak - </:

So for this I use:

SyntaxEditor Code Snippet

"([a-zA-Z0-9])(\s+[\r|\n|\r\n]\t+)(</)"

I hope this helps.

Goodluck!

08 Jun 2018

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