Re: XML-SAX not quite right

[Larry Ducie <larry_ducie@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Sharon,

This SAX parser works by reading through your xml document and firing a call to your handler procedure every time an event occurs.

You have code for some events, but you are missing a crucial one - *XML_CHARS.

Consider the following trivial example:

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<root>
<SKU>PT0110</SKU>
</root>

you should get the following calls:

*XML_START_DOCUMENT
*XML_START_ELEMENT  - value passed is 'root'
*XML_START_ELEMENT - value passed is 'SKU'
*XML_CHARS - value passed is 'PT0110'
*XML_END_ELEMENT - value passed is 'SKU'
*XML_ENDELEMENT - value passed is 'root'
*XML_END_DOCUMENT

You are not handling what happens when the *XML_CHARS event  occurs.

Also, you will not know what element the *XML_CHARS relates to unless you hold a variable telling you what the last *XML_START_ELEMENT had as the value. I would suggest you define a static variable in your sub-proc and set it to the value of the element name during the *XML_START_ELEMENT event and clear it during the *XML_END_ELEMENT. This is not the best way to go for more complicated documents though.

If you are to do this in a robust manner you should have a static variable containing the full path to your current element and add elements to the path in *XML_START_ELEMENT and remove them in *XML_END_ELEMENT.

For the above list of events you would set your path to look like this:
*XML_START_DOCUMENT - path = '/'

*XML_START_ELEMENT  - path = 'root'

*XML_START_ELEMENT - path = '/root/SKU'

*XML_CHARS - path is unchanged but you get the value of SKU here as you are in /root/SKU

*XML_END_ELEMENT - path = '/root'

*XML_END_ELEMENT - path = '/'

*XML_END_DOCUMENT path = ''

Thus you would store the value of the SKU when a *XML_CHARS event is fired and your path = '/root/SKU'.    

Hope this makes sense.

Cheers

Larry Ducie



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