Re: XML-INTO woes

The XML-INTO handler some things for which I am most grateful which are
clearly documented at Boulder.
It loads the data structure I give it with the required number of
occurrences of an element (and children) capped at the number of
dimensions in the array I give it so that it fires only when that cap is
reached.

It does not fail if there are elements defined in my structure that are
missing in the xml document.
It does not fail if there are elements not defined in my structure that
present in the xml document.
It tells me how many elements it loaded into my array.

I tell my handler to use data I expect to find in each element in the
structure I have defined.

Because it does not tell me which elements were missing then my handler
cannot know this.
It is a reasonable assumption that these would simply be unpopulated
since I don't recall any documentation that indicates this is "bad"
data.

Because the DTD does not rigidly constrain users of the originating web
service that all elements must be supplied, even if unpopulated, then my
handler can only process elements based on their content. Because missing elements have gone "bad" then examining their content to
make I required decision is meaningless.

What I have not seen is any advice that the handler will fail to supply
correct data (or supply corrupt data) if supplied with an xml document
that has missing elements when the associated array has a dimension
greater than 1.

Since our DTD has existed for years, there can be no thought of now
restricting it.
If I had known about this "bad" data limitation I would have stuck to a
good old SAX technique.
Apart from that, what the compiler does with an XML-INTO operation is
simply divine.
So for the moment I shall tolerate the overhead of having the handler
fire for every iteration of a multi-occurrence element.

Peter




-----Original Message-----
From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Scott Klement
Sent: Saturday, 1 August 2009 5:22 a.m.
To: RPG programming on the IBM i / System i
Subject: Re: XML-INTO woes

Hi Peter,

XML-INTO will fill in only the elements that it found in the XML document. The remaining elements in your array are undefined (point to

adjacent memory) and you should not use them. Using them would be
"bad."

The number of elements that are passed to your %HANDLER is given to you in the 3rd parameter to your procedure.



Peter Connell wrote:

HELP.


I have a major deadline to meet and have now discovered that my
%XML-INTO handler routine is not working as expected.


The handler has been defined to process a DIM(40) array.

This appears to have been working until now when an investigation of a
decimal data error reveals that the data structure that the data
structure passed to the handler is corrupted when subsequent elements

in

the xml document are missing.

For example, a person-name element may contain 1st 2nd an last names

in

one occurrence but on the next may only contain the last name.

The missing name elements get populated with whatever might be found

in

some other element.

This is disastrous , since fields are then presented to the code in

the

handler containing rubbish.


Of course, I have compile the XML-INTO with the XmlOptions parameter

to

allow for missing elements as follows.

D XmlOptions C 'allowmissing=yes allowextra=yes

-

D doc=file

case=any

path='

This issue must surely have arisen before on this forum but I can't

find

it.

I have just been advised that a workaround is to set the array to

DIM(1)

so that the handler is call for each element of a multiple element xml
structure.


Regards,

Peter




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