Ask Ben: Collecting And Relating Sibling XML Nodes In A ColdFusion XML Document

Posted May 22, 2009 at 10:19 AM by Ben Nadel

Tags: ColdFusion, Ask Ben

Reader Comments

Thanks so much Ben! Sometimes I have a hard time visualizing the structure I need to get ColdFusion and Xml to play nice.
I had to change some of the code to get it to work with CF7 (like looping over the array). But the muddy waters are starting to clear a bit.
Thanks again for your help. Much appreciated.

@Robert,

No problem my man. Glad to help out.

Ben,
I am still having trouble. Is the resulting object treated as xml or as a structure? I can't seem to extract the data from the object to build coldfusion queries like you showed at:
http://www.bennadel.com/blog/1097-Ask-Ben-Converting-XML-Data-To-ColdFusion-Queries.htm
I am doing something similar to what you described in the above entry.
When I only had one <id> in the xml document I did this after setting the query:
<cfset sundayItems = ArrayLen(xmlData.mainDocument.informationTableData.saleDataInfo.sundayData.XmlChildren) - 1>
<cfloop index="i" from = "1" to = #sundayItems#>
<cfset temp = QuerySetCell(SundayQuery,"nameOfCompany", #xmlData.mainDocument.informationTableData.saleDataInfo.sundayData.saleDataList[i].
nameOfCompany.XmlText#, #i#)>
</cfloop>

But I'm having trouble doing the same with the objID created in your code above.

@Robert,

The objID created is an ID-based structure. Take a look at the CFDump output in the post; the ID is the key used to look up the sunday data.

Ok Ben, your Sainthood is in the works for your patience.
My confusion lay in the fact that when looping over the structure, the key id output to the browser as a string. Only after viewing the source did I see that all the xml tags were part of the output as well.
I think I got it though. The way I did it doesn't seem elegant to me but it seems to work. (Note that the second cfloop has a hard coded "to" for now.)

<cfset qSunday = QueryNew("ID, nameOfCompany","varchar, varchar" ) />

<cfloop collection="#objID#" item="ID">

<cfxml variable="sundayXML">#objID[ID]#</cfxml>

<cfloop index="i" from="1" to="2">

<cfset QueryAddRow( qCustomer ) />
<cfset qSunday[ "ID" ][ qSunday.RecordCount ] = JavaCast("string", #ID#
) />

<cfset qSunday[ "nameOfCompany" ][ qSunday.RecordCount ] = JavaCast(
"string",
sundayXML.sundayData.saleDataList[i].nameOfCompany.xmlText
) />

</cfloop>

</cfloop>

<cfdump
var="#qSunday#"
/>

Despite the fact that it works for me, if you could let me know if I did this in an absurdly roundabout way, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks again.

@Robert,

No problem; I think your confusion lies in the fact that you don't know that part of an XML document can exist on its own, outsize of the root reference.

If you look at the CFDump in my post, you'll notice that the "SundayData" that I stored in the ID-based struct is *actually* a sub-tree of the original XML document. That is to say, the sundayData node I stored in the struct is actually an XML node.

Because of this fact, this line that you have:

<cfxml variable="sundayXML">#objID[ID]#</cfxml>

... is completely redundant. You are taking an existing XML sub-tree and then turning it into a different XML document (sundayXML).

The disconnect that you are having is that you don't realize that you can simply refer to the stored sub-tree as XML already. So, for example, to get the company info, you can simply refer to:

objID[ID].saleDataList[i].nameOfCompany.xmlText

Does that make sense?

Yes, that makes complete sense. I stared at for a couple of hours late last night and I came to that same conclusion about needlessly creating another xml document.

I also have to get a handle on walking the tree. I think that once I wrap my head around that things will be a bit easier as well.

Your help is much appreciated.

Tell your boss I said you can have the rest of the day off.

@Robert,

Ha ha, no problem. Working with XML is odd at first, but you just have to get used to the structure. It's really just a combination of arrays and structures that you're used to working with. Just takes practice.

Hit me up if you have any more questions.

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