Requirements:
Raw XML is from external website I have little control via URL (eg. http://example.com/raw.xml)
I need to transform it via XSL into another XML file (I already have this XSL file written and it works)
I need to write an asp.net or asp file that takes the url, applies the xsl transform, and outputs the resultant xml that prompts the client to save the xml to the client local disk
End result is a xml file that has been xsl transformed, based on xsl and xml from external website
This should not be difficult, but I do not see any examples that allow me to do what is stated above. Please help! Thanks in advance!
You can get the external XML using the WebRequest class (for example).
The result can be loaded to an XML document and transformed - the transformed document can then be returned on the HttpResponse.OutputStream with the correct headers for an XML document (response-type will be either text/xml or application/xml).
Related
Hi I am using R to do some basic web scraping where I am comfortable parsing xml file and querying them with xpath. However I am having difficulty parsing a full html page and trying to extract the xml to get into my comfort zone. For example:
parsedhtml <- htmlParse("http://www.w3schools.com/XPath/xpath_examples.asp")
parses the html. I am using this because xmlParse only works on .xml files. I know that by using getNodeSet I can isolated specific nodes within the parsed html. So I am attempting to extract the embedded xml document under the "The Example XML Document" section by trying:
getNodeSet(parsedhtml, "//div[#class = 'code notranslate']")
where I get the data in the correct node, however it is not in standard xml and I am unable to parse this using xmlParse. My question is how do I use the result of getNodeSet to extract the xml?
Thanks very much
I have a asp.net application which reads and updates and xml file in my file system.I do have the options edit and save.As of now it serves my purpose but what if the user edits the values and saves but for some reason he wants to restore the old values to the xml file.I want to
have an option called reset which will get the old values of the xml file incase the user wants to get back to the default values.How do i create a back up to the original file and how do i call that xml file ??? Can any one suggest whether i am in right path or not?
I am using Linq-to xml here .
Keep a copy of the original XML file. Call it xml_file.bk and when the user clicks "reset" delete the current XML file and make a copy of XML_File.bk to the real name with the .xml extension.
You can use File.Move(sourcefile, destinationFile) to make a copy of the original.
File.Move documentation.
I am using file upload mechanism to upload file for an employee and converting it into byte[] and passing it to varBinary(Max) to store into database.
Now I what I have to do is, if any file is already uploaded for employee, simply read it from table and show file name. I have only one column to store a file and which is of type VarBinary.
Is it possible to get all file information from VarBinary field?
Any other way around, please let me know.
If you're not storing the filename, you can't retrieve it.
(Unless the file itself contains its filename in which case you'd need to parse the blob's contents.)
If the name of the file (and any other data about the file that's not part of the file's byte data) needs to be used later, then you need to save that data as well. I'd recommend adding a column for the file name, perhaps one for its type (mime type or something like that for properly sending it back to the client's browser, etc.) and maybe even one for size so you don't have to calculate that on the fly for each file (useful when displaying a grid of files and not wanting to touch the large blob field in the query that populates the grid).
Try to stay away from using the file name for system-internal identity purposes. It's fine for allowing the users to search for a file by name, select it, etc. But when actually making the request to the server to display the file it's better to use a simple integer primary key from the table to actually identify it. (On a side note, it's probably a good idea to put a unique constraint on the file name column.)
If you also need help displaying the file to the user, you'll probably want to take the approach that's tried and true for displaying images from a database. Basically it involves having a resource (generally an .aspx page, but could just as well be an HttpHandler instead) which accepts the file ID as a query string parameter and outputs the file.
This resource would have no UI (remove everything from the .aspx except the Page directive) and would manually manipulate the response headers (this is where you'd set the content type from the file's type), write the byte stream to the client, and end the response. From the client's perspective, something like ~/MyContent/MyFile.aspx?fileID=123 would be the file. (You can suggest a file name to the browser for saving purposes in the response headers, which you'd probably want to do with the file's stored name.)
There's no shortage of quick tutorials (some several years old, it's been around for a while) on how to do this with images. Just remember that there's essentially no difference from the server's perspective if it's an image or any other kind of file. All the server needs to do is send the type in the response headers and write the file's bytes to the client. How the client handles the file is up to the browser. In the vast majority of cases, the browser will know what to do (display an image, display via a plugin a PDF, save a .doc, etc.).
I able to upload my file through uploadify + .ashx, but the problem is I always get ContentType = application/octet-stream
Lets say I upload an image, I expected to return me "image/pjpeg", but it always return "application/octet-stream" no matter what file I uploaded.
Please advice how to get the correct contentType in .ashx
I believe that most probably content type is getting set by browser. Regardless, different browsers may set different content type for different files - and they may fall back to generic content type such as "application/octet-stream" for any binary file (pdf, zip, doc, xls). Its possible that one browser would report docx as "application/vnd.openxmlformats" while other as ""application/x-zip-compressed" and yet another as "application/octet-stream". And yet all of them are correct, because docx are binary file and are compressed (zip) files.
In short, my suggestion is that you should not rely on the content type sent by client (beyond certain extent such as deciding whether its text, html or binary etc) and rather use server side sniffing logic to determine type of file content. Simple sniffing can be based on file extension while more robust implementation will loot at actual file contents where typically first few bytes of file indicate the file type.
I have to create a tab delimited txt file from a query.
I want to call an HttpHandler that returns my txt file as a stream, I don't want to create the file phisically.
1st question:
what is the best practice to create the tab delimited txt file from a query result?
I have to fetch all rows and create the file manually?
2nd question:
How to set a timeout for the HttpHandler that creates the file?
Thanks for your time.
I would create a plain old http output stream and change the content type to 'text/plain' which means that you don't need to physically create the file on the web server, and if you add the content-disposition header to the output and specify that it has an attachment called something like 'report.txt' the user will be prompted to Open or Save the content, rather than just viewing it in the browser like a normal web page.
You can use the Server.ScriptTimeout = x to set the script timeout by gaining access to the current HttpContext object
Hope this helps