Report Function Definition XML

  

DEVELOPER

Click on the Function Definition Properties icon and click on the Parameters tab.

This tab has no effect unless the report produces XML output.

The Fields in this Window:

XML Tag - The XML element for the complete report.

Encoding - The encoding to be output in the XML report’s Declaration. A list of commonly used encodings can be selected from, or an encoding can be entered. The input is not validated.

CDATA Options - Default PROIV behaviour is for XML reports to never use CDATA wrapping, but to always normalise. This means that all reserved characters will be escaped in the XML output. As an example you are not allowed &, < and > characters as element data without normalising them to the strings &amp; &lt; or &gt; respectively.

Sometimes it is required that the reserved characters are not normalised (for example if HTML statements are required in the data), and CDATA wrapping allows this to be done. An example of HTML in XML element data is:

<![CDATA[<greeting>Hello, world!</greeting>]]>

PROIV offers the following four combinations of normalisation and CDATA wrapping:

  1. No CDATA wrapping, full normalisation. This is the default behaviour explained above.

  2. No CDATA wrapping, no normalisation. This leaves all the XML element data unchanged. N.B. This can lead to invalid XML if reserved characters are in the output.

  3. Always wrap with CDATA, no normalisation. All element data will be CDATA wrapped, whether it includes reserved characters or not.

  4. Wrap with CDATA if required, no normalisation. Element data will be CDATA wrapped only if it includes reserved characters.

Prologue - Click to maintain the XML prologue text, in the free text area. This text will be prefixed to the report’s XML output.

Epilogue -  Click to maintain the XML epilogue text, in the free text area. This text will be appended to the report’s XML output.

Notes - Click to enter or view descriptive notes on the function.

Comment on this topic

Topic ID: 500286