Re: XML parsing (RPG commands)

Lowary, Jim wrote:

I've just started looking at the commands and XML-INTO and XML-SAX .
It seems that both of these expect to have a DataStructure with the
names for the fields to match the element tags and attribute names. Is
this correct, or am I missing something?

You're missing something. What you say is true about XML-INTO, however with XML-SAX there's absolutely no requirement that the tag names match the field names.

I will have a vendors file that will have tags with "-" (dashes) in
them, not a valid RPG field name, so how do you handle this? Also some
of the elements/attribute names could be longer than what RPG allows for
fields length name.

When tag names contain special characters, like the dash, that aren't allowed in an RPG variable name, you simply cannot use XML-INTO.

You can, however, still use XML-SAX.

Length, however, should be a non-issue. I've never run into an XML tag name greater than 4096 characters long (the maximum length of an RPG variable name.) However, on the other hand, I'd really hate to have a variable name that's 4000 characters long to try to type into my source member! But that's just my fingers complaining, the compiler will certainly handle it. (I feel sorry for the IBMer who had to write the test cases to test support for 4096 character variables, though!)

Do I go back to brute force and code the decode myself? Getting the
vendor to change is not an option.

XML-SAX will do it.
IBM XML Toolkit will do it.
Expat will do it (what I use -- open source)
Lots of 3rd party options are available as well.

No reason to do it manually.