XML / XSL

Re: Some questions about XML

12-Jan-03 14:52

Marc Clifton wrote:
The thing that bothers me is that I can, for example, edit a flat file that describes a menu structure much more easily that I can edit a similar XML file.

For something like an outline of a book. I absolutly agree.

Marc Clifton wrote:
But from what you and others have said, it also seems that it is a good tool for parsing and validation, regardless of inter-application issues.
Yes but for interapp usage I would think once the tools have been tested this in not the issue that it is for data between apps and companies.

Marc Clifton wrote:
It seems that even simple data structures need some sort of an editor to make the data more user friendly. Thoughts?
I would not plan for the raw XML file to be edited and manipulated by end users if this is a common task to be done. Yes go create an editor if the data is XML or not.

Now if the data is available in XML (native or export/import) then if a power user does need to do something the likely hood that they can figure it out is much greater. They can then create the editor they need for their task with your format. I would also expect to have a schema available. My band wagon here. Please use XSD and not DTD's, why use non-XML to describe XML.

"I will find a new sig someday."

Stephane Rodriguez.14-Jan-03 1:58

Stephane Rodriguez.

14-Jan-03 1:58

XML is a readable compound document file format (IStorage/IStream folders/files metaphore). At each level you may have an arbitrarily deep set of children, and so on. That's why it simplifies versioning a lot over time : no need to break a file format, just add new storages.

Question on xml encoding in C#,

Bugoy9-Jan-03 10:29

Bugoy

9-Jan-03 10:29

I have this code snipet in my c# classs that generates a string containg xml data.

//build xml data
StringWriter xmlStringWriter = null;
XmlTextWriter xmlWriter = null;

string xmlString = "";
StringBuilder xmlStringBuilder = new StringBuilder();
try
{
xmlStringWriter = new StringWriter(xmlStringBuilder);
xmlWriter = new XmlTextWriter((xmlStringWriter);
xmlWriter.Formatting = Formatting.Indented;

xmlWriter.WriteStartDocument(); //start document

//populate xml

However, the generated xml string contains the header as:

Does anybody know of a way to use enconding "utf-8" when building an xmldoc inside a string?

Re: Question on xml encoding in C#,

Michael A. Barnhart11-Jan-03 12:25

How to convert data in MFC object to XML

11-Jan-03 12:25

It appears that you did not check the display message as-is (no HTML).

Are you trying to save an XML document inside a single string to then include in a second instance of something else (be it a XML doc or what ever?)

"I will find a new sig someday."

The_wind8-Jan-03 19:21

The_wind

8-Jan-03 19:21

I have a problem with converting all serialized data of MFC Object such as COleClientItem, CDocItem and CObject to XML. I would appreciate it if someone could suggest me how to solve this problem.

Thank very much for your help.

Re: How to convert data in MFC object to XML

Michael A. Barnhart11-Jan-03 12:27

11-Jan-03 12:27

I think you need to be a little more explict on what you are asking. A CObject can contain anything so your question is really how do I serialize all possible data in all formats as XML.

"I will find a new sig someday."

Using MSXML from C++

me7-Jan-03 19:35

7-Jan-03 19:35

Not sure if this is the right place to post, but...

I am trying to read and write attributes from a DOM.
The attributes are of type base64Binary, and I am using IXMLDOMElement::setAttribute(BSTR, VARIANT). How to I package/assign binary data (currently a CDWordArray, but I'm very flexible!!) into/from the variant?

Thanks!!!

Michael A. Barnhart11-Jan-03 12:22

11-Jan-03 12:22

Using BSTR, Variant should be fine but keep in mind that the memory block you are writting to the document must be compliant with allowed characters. This is espcially true with using the attribute data blocks vs a CData section. Just think of handling the transmission over a http connection. You would have to encode/decode the data. The same concept can apply here. Encode the binary into a string and set it to be the attribute value is one path I have used for smaller sets of information.

"I will find a new sig someday."

me12-Jan-03 12:36

12-Jan-03 12:36

Thanks, no one seems to know much about this.....
I have no experiance with http connections/communictions. Is it possible for you to dumb it down a bit?
Encoding/decoding to me means stripping out the " ", "<", ">" etc characters, and replacing them when reading. Is this true? Are you aware of any functions available that will do this for me? I've found http://www.codeproject.com/internet/mimesniffer.asp Is this the sort of thing I should be using?

My data will typically go to 20 to 30 attributes, each of which will be less than 1 KByte.

Michael A. Barnhart12-Jan-03 13:40

12-Jan-03 13:40

Here is some code I did awhile back.
You need to remove nondisplay as well as conflicting characters from the display.

CString EnCodeStr(CString ToCode)
{
CString RetStr,AddStr;
int i,max;
unsigned short asc;
unsigned char c;
max = (unsigned int)ToCode.GetLength();
// For binary you need to send the length, The block could have zeros
for(i=0;i<max;i++)
{
c =="" tocode[i];
asc="c;
if(asc">47 && asc<58)
{
RetStr+=c;
}
else if(asc>64 && asc<91)
{
RetStr+=c;
}
else if(asc>96 && asc<123)
{
RetStr+=c;
}
else if(asc==32)
{
RetStr+="+";
}
else
{
AddStr.Format("%%%02x",asc);
RetStr+=AddStr;
}
}
return RetStr;
}

CString DeCodeStr(CString ToCode)
{
CString RetStr,AddStr;
int i,max;
unsigned short asc;
unsigned char c;
max = (unsigned int)ToCode.GetLength();
for(i=0;i<max;)
{
c =="" tocode[i];
asc="c;
if(asc==37)
{
AddStr=ToCode.Mid(i+1,2);
i+=3;
sscanf((LPCTSTR)AddStr,"%2x",&asc);
RetStr+=(char)asc;
}
else" if(asc="=43)
{
RetStr" +=" " ;
i++;
}
else
{
retstr="" retstr;
}

for="" smaller="" blocks="" that="" you="" mention="" this="" should="" be="" ok.

now="" i="" am="" assuming="" a="" mfc="" solution="" is="" ok.
to="" get="" the="" data="" into="" string="" one="" option="" to="" use="" cmemfile="" detach()="" and="" attach()="" functions.

sorry="" do="" not="" have="" time="" sample.="" would="" think="" could="" search="" on="" above.

=""

<b="">"I will find a new sig someday."

me12-Jan-03 13:59

12-Jan-03 13:59

That sample's great, thanks. My main concern was what you meant by coding and encoding. If that's good enough then fantastic!!!!
thanks again.

Michael A. Barnhart12-Jan-03 14:24

12-Jan-03 14:24

Glad it helped. Take care.

"I will find a new sig someday."

Retsof Nawor12-Jan-03 17:58

Retsof Nawor

12-Jan-03 17:58

Maybe I am missing what Michael is getting at but I don't think he is entirely correct. The base64Binary datatype by definition doesn't require any replacements to be legal in an xml document as when it is encoded it uses the characters 0-9 a-z A-Z '+' '/' ie no replacements required see section 6.8 of http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2045.txt for details (this page is linked to by the Schema spec). Also be aware that most XML DOM do translations required ie you set strings containing '>' '&' etc and they will automatically be converted on output to < and &, however I'm not sure if this is the case for binary types.

If possible I would be tempted to use the hexBinary datatype as I find that easier to understand, two characters (0-9 a-f) are used to represent each hex octet ie 0x7f10 would be "7f10" in your XML doc.

Hope I haven't confused you...

me12-Jan-03 18:50

12-Jan-03 18:50

No, that makes a bit more sense to me, and sounds easier to implement and check.
Is there an easy way to convert the 0x7f10 to "7f10"?
sprintf("%08h", intArray[0]) is OK for an int, but a bit tedious for arrays.
Is there a "short cut" here, or am I stuck with a loop?
Being able to calculate the length of the final string from the input string seems to me like a major advantage over Michael's code.

Michael A. Barnhart13-Jan-03 13:03

13-Jan-03 13:03

Thanks for correcting this. I guess I have been working to long. I totally over looked base64Binary was mentioned and just read a binary memory block in a BSTR field.

Take Care.

"I will find a new sig someday."

Human readable XML

michaKFromParis7-Jan-03 6:42

michaKFromParis

7-Jan-03 6:42

I use the MSXML IXMLDOMDocument to load and save settings of a Visual C++ Project. My code looks like this:

<br />
//create an instance of the parser<br />
hr = Document.CoCreateInstance(__uuidof(DOMDocument));<br />
if (FAILED(hr) || (Document.p == NULL)) throw (IDS_XML_CANT_CREATE_XML_PARSER);<br />
<br />
// load the xml document file<br />
VARIANT_BOOL Success = false;<br />
hr = Document->load(CComVariant(m_szFilename), &Success);<br />
if (FAILED(hr) || !Success) throw (IDS_XML_SETTINGS_CANT_LOAD_SETTINGS);<br />

Everything works fine and is square with the MSDN recommandations. But I still have a tiny problem: I decided to use XML in order to allow my users to manually edit the conf file but right now, the parser writes everything on a single row, making it hard to read. Eek! | :eek:

It is important to tell the parser to write tabs, spaces and linefeeds ...
but how ??? Confused | :confused:

Re: Human readable XML

Michael A. Barnhart11-Jan-03 12:14

Please Help: I cannot figure this out

11-Jan-03 12:14

Look for the whitespace settings (options). carraige returns and line feeds are just child text nodes.
Your users should be able to add the linefeed text manually and not impact your reading the data back in as a last option.

"I will find a new sig someday."

lnong23-Dec-02 1:59

lnong

23-Dec-02 1:59

How come the "Copy Project" option in VS.NET is always disabled whenever I need to transfer a finished web service on my local computer to my remote web host's server? (I was always able to use this method to tranfer my ASP.NET projects).

Therefore, I had to copy the files manually via FTP. The files I copied were:

1) myService.asmx
2) myService.vsdisco
3) global.asax
4) web.config
5) bin folder which contains: myService.dll

All these files and the "bin" folder were copied to a folder called MyServiceFolder located at the root of my website's directory structure. But whenever I try to access the service (http://www.mysite.com/MyServiceFolder/myService.asmx) it fails. And it will not display the specific error because it could not locate the web.config (where <customerrors="off">).

However, when I move the web.config file out of the MyServiceFolder and into the parent folder, and tried it again, it was able to tell me the specific error: "Parser Error Message: Could not create type 'MyNamespace.MyClass'." But this means that my web service is still not working.

After some more trial and error, I was able to access my web service. What I did was that I also moved the "bin" folder out of the "MyServicefolder" and into the parent folder (where web.config is sitting). This made everything to work.

The location of my files on the server now looks like this (which is kinda too messy):

1) /web.config
2) /bin/myService.dll
3) /MyServiceFolder/myService.asmx
3) /MyServiceFolder/myService.vsdisco
4) /MyServiceFolder/global.asax

But the point is that I want to be able to organize all of my projects (web service, asp.net apps, etc) into their own folders on the server. So my big question is how can I put this web service into one folder such as MyServiceFolder, and make it work?

Is there some configuration/setup file where I can edit the path directories?

My other big question is how come I cannot use the "Copy Project" option to transfer web services to a remote server?

PLEASE HELP! Thanks.

Saving HTML Form Data to XML....... Need Help......

zhixiong19-Dec-02 19:12

zhixiong

19-Dec-02 19:12

Pls look at the link below so as to understand my problem..... its just a very short page so pls look at it.....

http://www.xmlfiles.com/articles/michael/htmlxml/default.asp

For the above link, the datas are being saved to xml using 'processForm.asp', if i cant use 'ASP' and my only choices are 'JSP' or 'Java' , 'XSL' to display. Can it be done???

Any websites that have similar examples or links will be greatly thankful.....

Re: Saving HTML Form Data to XML....... Need Help......

Victor Boctor22-Dec-02 13:06

Victor Boctor

22-Dec-02 13:06

A clickable version of the link above:
http://www.xmlfiles.com/articles/michael/htmlxml/default.asp[^]

phpWebNotes is a page annotation system modelled after php.net.
http://webnotes.sourceforge.net/demo.php[^]

MSXML 4.0 deployment

act_x19-Dec-02 9:13

act_x

19-Dec-02 9:13

I am working on a parser using VC++ that utilizes MSXML 4.0. I have built a release version . I need to deploy this on another machine that doesnt have MSXML installed. How can I know which components(.ocx's or dll's) to include ?

Please help

Richard Deeming20-Dec-02 0:34

Richard Deeming

20-Dec-02 0:34

If you are creating a Windows Installer for your project, you can use the merge module (see the link for the downloads). Otherwise, you can either use the CAB file, or just run the MSXML4 setup on the other machine.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/downloads/sample.asp?url=/msdn-files/027/001/766/msdncompositedoc.xml[^]

"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined." - Homer

Michael A. Barnhart20-Dec-02 1:11

20-Dec-02 1:11

You may want to check the legal redistribution on this. It may require you to use their setup vs just including the pieces.

"I will find a new sig someday."

act_x20-Dec-02 4:36

act_x

20-Dec-02 4:36

Thanks for the reply. I would like to know how exactly to use the cab file .

Michael A. Barnhart20-Dec-02 5:14