Got a massive problem with some XML. I've done a lot to do with reading XML but never actually written it and here is my XML document at the moment.
I've attached some photos of my XML and ASP.NET function to loop through but every time I loop through the notification.outerxml updates with the new date but the start and end date do not.
any ideas?
Use .// instead of // to make an XPath that is relative to current context node, for example :
ldteStartDate = CDate(notification.SelectSingleNode(".//StartDate").InnerText)
// starts from the document's root, hence you always get the same first-matched element using such XPath axis with SelectSingleNode().
Related
So I have a PDF that has been created on the fly by opening a template, modifying the values for certain fields, and then saved.
Works:
If I open the file in Chrome, I have the correct values.
If I save the file to disk and open it with Adobe Reader DC (or whatever that's called), I get the correct values.
Doesn't Work:
When I open the document in IE 10, it opens in Edge, and shows "default" values for the fields.
When I save the file to disk and open it with IE, it shows "default" values.
When I open the file using "PDF reader - Document Viewer and Manager" it shows "default" values.
I'm using Windows 10, the application I'm working on is done in ASP.Net. It works the same way whether I return a FileStreamResult, FilePathResult, or File.
And I'm now pretty much certain the problem is Microsoft's products and not my code.
Any idea why Microsoft products are incapable of opening my PDFs correctly? Do they have to be flattened in some specific way or something?
Edit (more information as requested in comments):
The documents are created using PdfSharp.
They have fields that are dynamically replaced with values (i.e. [MyFieldA] is replaced with "ActualValueA").
Once the merge fields are replaced with actual values, the file is written using File.WriteAllText(fileName,fileText); where fileText is obtained through File.ReadAllText(fileTemplateName);
Image of comparison of fields that are wonky:
So I found the solution to the problem, and it appears that it might be a two-fold thing.
One piece of the puzzle I believe was the memorystream being used to create the PDF. It was declared in an inner scope, used in a PdfReader.Open call in an assignment to a var that was declared in an outer scope, and then the scope ended, while the var was still being used. I moved the memorystream declaration to the outer scope where the var declaration was so that they would be in the same scope. Also, the memorystream wasn't being closed with a memoryStream.Close() call or in a using (var memoryStream = new MemoryStream()) { } block. So I added a call to memoryStream.Close().
The other piece is that the PDF template form fields had some default display values. It appears that Microsoft stuff (Edge, PDF Viewer) may not be able to get the inserted values, and is instead reading the default display values of the fields and displaying those. Once all of the default display values were removed, Edge began opening the PDF and displaying values correctly.
Since these two pieces were done in tandem, I can't say for certain that they both play an equal role in this, but these are the only two changes that were done to get values to start displaying correctly. My gut feeling is that the problem lies with the default display values and Edge.
I'm trying to scrape an ASP.NET page with Excel. Unfortunately, the page only returns 50 records at a time, of several pages. Excel's native Web Query module only picks up the first page. I want all the pages.
Like most (all?) ASP pages, there are a few hidden variables sent back to the server when requesting a new page. The important ones are _VIEWSTATE and _EVENT_VALIDATION.
I've written a VBA function that gets the HTML source of the page and scrapes these variables from it.
I've also written an .iqy page, which allows for POST requests in it. It looks something like this:
WEB
1
http://www.myaspwebsite/search/search_List.aspx
__EVENTTARGET=&__EVENTARGUMENT=&__VIEWSTATE=%2FwEPDwULLTEy[....truncated ..50k characters..]Mhudyk5U6u8%2BBpvxDPN8R4%3D&__EVENTVALIDATION=%2FwEWFQL%2FkN%2FBCgL6g%2B5vAvfY06EOAoic4qIIAome%2Bf4PAuOrjYgIAuKrjYgIAuGrjYgIAuCrjYgIAuerjYgIAt7e34UPAvuL7m8CtuLToQ4CiaTioggCyKX5%2Fg8C4tv1sAgC49v1sAgC4Nv1sAgC4dv1sAgC5tv1sAgC%2Fd7fhQ%2BU8QRtxd7MM4Bpa%2F%2FZC7I64eUh3Q%3D%3D&ctl00_RadMenu1_ClientState=&ctl00%24ContentPlaceHolder1%24NavBar1%24PageNoDropDownList=2&ctl00%24ContentPlaceHolder1%24NavBar1%24btnGo=Go&ctl00%24ContentPlaceHolder1%24NavBar2%24PageNoDropDownList=1
Selection=AllTables
Formatting=None
PreFormattedTextToColumns=True
ConsecutiveDelimitersAsOne=True
SingleBlockTextImport=False
DisableDateRecognition=False
DisableRedirections=False
This iqy page successfully retuns the desired results if the post query is placed in the file.
I can also use this .iqy page programmatically in VBA and assign the POST query dynamically using QueryTables. However, I get told that my query returned nothing.
I suspect this is because of the length of my argument. The VIEWSTATE alone is about 50k characters. I've tried printing the argument string to a file and it truncates it. However, I can read the same string from a file and use it dynamically successfully.
My questions are : Am I going about this the best way? What limitations should I be aware of when doing this? Also, is there a limit to string size in Excel?
According to Microsoft's documentation on Visual Basic strings (same value applies to VBA strings):
A string can contain from 0 to approximately two billion (2 ^ 31) Unicode characters.
That is more than enough to handle a 50k string. A simple way to bypass IDE line limits and immediate window printing limits would be to print the string into an Excel cell and then read it back into a variable when you need to use that piece of data.
I'm breaking my head over this for a while now and I have no clue what I do wrong.
The scenario is as followed, I'm using swfupload to upload files with a progressbar
via a webservice. the webservice needs to return the name of the generated thumbnail.
This all goes well and though i prefer to get the returned data in json (might change it later in the swfupload js files) the default xml data is fine too.
So when an upload completes the webservice returns the following xml as expected (note I removed the namespace in webservice):
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<string>myfile.jpg</string>
Now I want to parse this result with jquery and thought the following would do it:
var xml = response;
alert($(xml).find("string").text());
But I cannot get the string value. I've tried lots of combinations (.html(), .innerhtml(), response.find("string").text() but nothing seems to work. This is my first time trying to parse xml via jquery so maybe I'm doing something fundemantally wrong. The 'response' is populated with the xml.
I hope someone can help me with this.
Thanks for your time.
Kind regards,
Mark
I think $(xml) is looking for a dom object with a selector that matches the string value of XML, so I guess it's coming back null or empty?
The First Plugin mentioned below xmldom looks pretty good, but if your returned XML really is as simply as your example above, a bit of string parsing might be quicker, something like:
var start = xml.indexOf('<string>') + 8;
var end = xml.indexOf('</string>');
var resultstring = xml.substring(start, end);
From this answer to this question: How to query an XML string via DOM in jQuery
Quote:
There are a 2 ways to approach this.
Convert the XML string to DOM, parse it using this plugin or follow this tutorial
Convert the XML to JSON using this plugin.
jQuery cannot parse XML. If you pass a string full of XML content into the $ function it will typically try to parse it as HTML instead using standard innerHTML. If you really need to parse a string full of XML you will need browser-specific and not-globally-supported methods like new DOMParser and the XMLDOM ActiveXObject, or a plugin that wraps them.
But you almost never need to do this, since an XMLHttpRequest should return a fully-parsed XML DOM in the responseXML property. If your web service is correctly setting a Content-Type response header to tell the browser that what's coming back is XML, then the data argument to your callback function should be an XML Document object and not a string. In that case you should be able to use your example with find() and text() without problems.
If the server-side does not return an XML Content-Type header and you're unable to fix that, you can pass the option type: 'xml' in the ajax settings as an override.
I need to create a service that will return XML containing data from the database. So I am thinking about using an ASHX that will accept things like date range and POST an XML file back. I have dealt with pages pulling data from SQL Server and populating into a datagrid for visual display but never into XML for delivery, what is the best way to do this? Also if an ASHX and POST isn't the best method for delivery let me know... thanks!
EDIT: These answers are great and pointing me in the right direction. I should have also mentioned that the XML format has already been decided so I can't use any automatically generated one.
Combining linq2sqlwith the XElement classes, something along the lines:
var xmlContacts =
new XElement("contacts",
(from c in context.Contacts
select new XElement("contact",
new XElement
{
new XElement("name", c.Name),
new XElement("phone", c.Phone),
new XElement("postal", c.Postal)
)
)
).ToArray()
)
);
Linq2sql will retrieve the data in a single call to the db, and the processing of the XML will be done at the business server. This splits the load better, since you don't have the sql server doing all the job.
Have you tried DataSet.WriteXml()?
You could have this be the output of a web service call.
Sql Server 2005 and above has a "FOR XML AUTO" command that will convert your recordset to XML for you. Then you just have to return a string from your ASHX.
Beginning with SQL Server 2000, you can return query results as XML. For absolute control of them, use the "FOR XML EXPLICIT" command. You can use any format you desire that way.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms189068.aspx
It's as easy as writing your result to the raw output then. For added points, you can return the result set to a XPathDocument, pass it through an XSL transformation, and send the results out in any format you choose (HTML vs XML at the click of a button perhaps).
you can obtained that to a datatable and then call myTable.WriteXML()
if you are populating classes with the your database results then add the serializable attribute to the header your classes, and use the XMLSerializer
Converting an automatically generated format into a specified one is a job for xslt. Just find a way to run the output from the tool through an xslt filter.
Oracle has a great product for doing exactly this job - the oracle XDK. But it's a java thing, not ASP as far as I know.
For an example, this XHTML
http://www.anbg.gov.au/abrs/online-resources/flora/stddisplay.xsql?pnid=2524
is generated automatically from this XML, which is generated by oracle
http://www.anbg.gov.au/abrs/online-resources/flora/stddisplay.xsql?pnid=2524&xml-stylesheet=none
Of course, you are not after XHTML, but some other XML format. But XSLT will do the job.
I'm building a listing/grid control in a Flex application and using it in a .NET web application. To make a really long story short I am getting XML from a webservice of serialized objects. I have a page limit of how many things can be on a page. I've taken a data grid and made it page, sort across pages, and handle some basic filtering.
In regards to paging I'm using a Dictionary keyed on the page and storing the XML for that page. This way whenever a user comes back to a page that I've saved into this dictionary I can grab the XML from local memory instead of hitting the webservice. Basically, I'm caching the data retrieved from each call to the webservice for a page of data.
There are several things that can expire my cache. Filtering and sorting are the main reason. However, a user may edit a row of data in the grid by opening an editor. The data they edit could cause the data displayed in the row to be stale. I could easily go to the webservice and get the whole page of data, but since the page size is set at runtime I could be looking at a large amount of records to retrieve.
So let me now get to the heart of the issue that I am experiencing. In order to prevent getting the whole page of data back I make a call to the webservice asking for the completely updated record (the editor handles saving its data).
Since I'm using custom objects I need to serialize them on the server to XML (this is handled already for other portions of our software). All data is handled through XML in e4x. The cache in the Dictionary is stored as an XMLList.
Now let me show you my code...
var idOfReplacee:String = this._WebService.GetSingleModelXml.lastResult.*[0].*[0].#Id;
var xmlToReplace:XMLList = this._DataPages[this._Options.PageIndex].Data.(#Id == idOfReplacee);
if(xmlToReplace.length() > 0)
{
delete (this._DataPages[this._Options.PageIndex].Data.(#Id == idOfReplacee)[0]);
this._DataPages[this._Options.PageIndex].Data += this._WebService.GetSingleModelXml.lastResult.*[0].*[0];
}
Basically, I get the id of the node I want to replace. Then I find it in the cache's Data property (XMLList). I make sure it exists since the filter on the second line returns the XMLList.
The problem I have is with the delete line. I cannot make that line delete that node from the list. The line following the delete line works. I've added the node to the list.
How do I replace or delete that node (meaning the node that I find from the filter statement out of the .Data property of the cache)???
Hopefully the underscores for all of my variables do not stay escaped when this is posted! otherwise this._ == this._
Thanks for the answers guys.
#Theo:
I tried the replace several different ways. For some reason it would never error, but never update the list.
#Matt:
I figured out a solution. The issue wasn't coming from what you suggested, but from how the delete works with Lists (at least how I have it in this instance).
The Data property of the _DataPages dictionary object is list of the definition nodes (was arrived at by a previous filtering of another XML document).
<Models>
<Definition Id='1' />
<Definition Id='2' />
</Models>
I ended up doing this little deal:
//gets the index of the node to replace from the same filter
var childIndex:int = (this._DataPages[this._Options.PageIndex].Data.(#Id == idOfReplacee)[0]).childIndex();
//deletes the node from the list
delete this._DataPages[this._Options.PageIndex].Data[childIndex];
//appends the new node from the webservice to the list
this._DataPages[this._Options.PageIndex].Data += this._WebService.GetSingleModelXml.lastResult.*[0].*[0];
So basically I had to get the index of the node in the XMLList that is the Data property. From there I could use the delete keyword to remove it from the list. The += adds my new node to the list.
I'm so used to using the ActiveX or Mozilla XmlDocument stuff where you call "SelectSingleNode" and then use "replaceChild" to do this kind of stuff. Oh well, at least this is in some forum where someone else can find it. I do not know the procedure for what happens when I answer my own question. Perhaps this insight will help someone else come along and help answer the question better!
Perhaps you could use replace instead?
var oldNode : XML = this._DataPages[this._Options.PageIndex].Data.(#Id == idOfReplacee)[0];
var newNode : XML = this._WebService.GetSingleModelXml.lastResult.*[0].*[0];
oldNode.parent.replace(oldNode, newNode);
I know this is an incredibly old question, but I don't see (what I think is) the simplest solution to this problem.
Theo had the right direction here, but there's a number of errors with the way replace was being used (and the fact that pretty much everything in E4X is a function).
I believe this will do the trick:
oldNode.parent().replace(oldNode.childIndex(), newNode);
replace() can take a number of different types in the first parameter, but AFAIK, XML objects are not one of them.
I don't immediately see the problem, so I can only venture a guess. The delete line that you've got is looking for the first item at the top level of the list which has an attribute "Id" with a value equal to idOfReplacee. Ensure that you don't need to dig deeper into the XML structure to find that matching id.
Try this instead:
delete (this._DataPages[this._Options.PageIndex].Data..(#Id == idOfReplacee)[0]);
(Notice the extra '.' after Data). You could more easily debug this by setting a breakpoint on the second line of the code you posted, and ensure that the XMLList looks like you expect.