#region Coad's Code : XML

Obtaining Indented XML as a String

coad — Tue, 22 Jun 2004 05:55:00 GMT

Using XmlDocument.Save(string file) produces a file with nicely indented elements. XmlDocument.OuterXml returns a string without any formatting. If you want a nicely formatted string (to display to the user, write to console, etc), without directly writing to a file, you must use the XmlTextWriter.

The using statements in the method makes sure the resorces are disposed of sooner than later. Here is the code to return a string of formatted XML from an XmlDocument. Download Example Code (requires Visual Studio 2005)

using System.IO;
using System.Xml;

public static string FormatXML(XmlDocument doc)
{ 
  // Create a stream buffer that can be read as a string
  using (StringWriter sw = new StringWriter())

    // Create a specialized writer for XML code
    using (XmlTextWriter xtw = new XmlTextWriter(sw))
    {
      // Set the writer to use indented (hierarchical) elements
      xtw.Formatting = System.Xml.Formatting.Indented;

      // Write the XML document to the stream
      doc.WriteTo(xtw);

      // Return the stream as a string
      return sw.ToString();
    }
}

Well Formatted Blog, Can't Directly Copy from MS Word

coad — Thu, 15 Apr 2004 04:06:00 GMT

Wow! Well I just had to go back through all my posts and repost them all. It seams that one can not directly copy and paste from a Microsoft Word document to achieve a nicely formatted blog.

Invalid XML code is the end result causing the RSS feed to break. This not only affects my blog’s feed, but also the main MSMVPS.org feed.

Thanks to Miha Markic for pointing this out quickly before I had posted much more than the first 10 initial posts!!

http://www.rthand.com/

I’ve spent much time checking and rechecking the RSS feed and it is now verifiable XML. Thank goodness! BUT it can’t currently be validated by the most common online RSS validator because it BOMBS (see next post)! You can however validate it is a valid XML file with a simple XML parse like my previous post shows.

Much thanks to Roy Osherove's blog on “Pasting nicely formatted code into your blog” which explains the correct steps to use.

http://weblogs.asp.net/rosherove/archive/2004/02/05/67957.aspx

Here are the steps from Roy’s blog that work well:

Write the code in VS.NET
Paste it into a new Word document
Save the document as HTML (filtered) (or .Text will have trouble with it)
Close the doc, then re-open it without changing any text after that (this is an important step)
Copy the code from the doc into your blog post

Word is a great way to compose the post. I use a single celled table with a white background for the code window and set the tabs to .25”. This allows me to just copy and paste from Visual Studio.

Here is a VB Script that is based off of the script by Roy. I recommend making a Blog.dot Word Template, putting this in the module, and putting a button on a toolbar to access the code. Then base blog posts off of the template.

Sub FormatCodeForBlog()

ActiveDocument.Save

ActiveDocument.SaveAs FileName:="Blog-Temp.htm", FileFormat:=wdFormatFilteredHTML, _

LockComments:=False, Password:="", AddToRecentFiles:=True, WritePassword _

:="", ReadOnlyRecommended:=False, EmbedTrueTypeFonts:=False, _

SaveNativePictureFormat:=False, SaveFormsData:=False, SaveAsAOCELetter:=False

ActiveDocument.SaveAs FileName:="Blog-Temp2.htm", FileFormat:=wdFormatFilteredHTML, _

LockComments:=False, Password:="", AddToRecentFiles:=False, WritePassword _

:="", ReadOnlyRecommended:=False, EmbedTrueTypeFonts:=False, _

SaveNativePictureFormat:=False, SaveFormsData:=False, SaveAsAOCELetter:=False

RecentFiles(1).Open

Selection.WholeStory

Selection.Copy

RecentFiles(2).Open

Dim doc As Document

For Each doc In Documents

If doc.Name = "Blog-Temp.htm" Or doc.Name = "Blog-Temp2.htm" Then doc.Close

Next doc

MsgBox "Proper blog compatible XHTML has been copied to the clipboard."

End Sub

The code may seam strange with the two files going on but I found that if you close the active document, the macro stops. Since the file must be reloaded, a second file is created then the first opened. This macro also returns you back to your original document.

Assimilate XML RSS Feed from URL in C#

coad — Thu, 15 Apr 2004 02:46:00 GMT

This piece of code pulls an RSS feed and displays the title of the articles. It is here to demonstrate just how easy it is to pull XML off the web and utilize the data.

I use Trace.WriteLine instead of Console.WriteLine so the report is fed to the Visual Studio output window and can be run as either a Console or Windows app, but at least a new Console window is not opened.

using System.Xml;

using System.Net;

using System.Text;

using System.Diagnostics;

// -------------------------------

// RSS XML Feed URL

string url = "http://msmvps.com/coad/rss.aspx";

// Create an interface to the web

WebClient c = new WebClient();

// Download the XML into a string

string xml = ASCIIEncoding.Default.GetString(c.DownloadData(url));

// Document to contain the feed

XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();

// Parse the xml

doc.LoadXml(xml);

// Display each article title

foreach (XmlNode node in doc.SelectNodes("/rss/channel/item/title"))

Trace.WriteLine(node.InnerText);

JScript XML Data Access

coad — Wed, 14 Apr 2004 04:10:00 GMT

“Random Vocabulary Word.js”

This simple JScript demonstrates just how easy it is to access data from an XML file through the Windows Scripting Host and MSHTML 4.0. You must have “Vocabulary.xml” in the same directory when running.

// Created by Noah Coad, coad.net/noah, 4/13/04

xmlFile = "Vocabulary.xml";

var xml = new ActiveXObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument.4.0");

xml.validateOnParse = false;

xml.async = false;

xml.load(xmlFile);

if (xml.parseError.errorCode != 0)

WScript.Echo("XML Parse Error : " + xml.parseError.reason);

else

{

var root = xml.documentElement;

var oNodeList = root.childNodes;

// Select a random word

var rnd = Math.floor(Math.random() * oNodeList.length);

// Create a message

var msg = oNodeList.item(rnd).selectSingleNode("Word").text;

msg += "\n" + oNodeList.item(rnd).selectSingleNode("Desc").text;

// Display the message

WScript.Echo(msg);

}

Simple C# XSL Transformation

coad — Wed, 14 Apr 2004 04:06:00 GMT

“XSLTransform.cs”

And here is a simple C# translator that takes an XML file sends it through an XSL file transform and saves the output. It is intended to be used as a console application. This can be easily used to apply the CSV transform XSL to Vocabulary.xml.

// Created by Noah Coad, coad.net/noah, noah@coad.net, 4/10/04

using System;

using System.IO;

using System.Xml;

using System.Xml.Xsl;

using System.Diagnostics;

namespace XSLTransform

{

class Transform

{

private Transform(string[] args)

{

// Make sure at least three command

// line arguments are specified

if (args.Length < 3) {ShowSyntax(); return;}

XslTransform xsl = new XslTransform();

// Attempt to load the XSL

try {xsl.Load(args[1]);}

catch (XmlException e) {Console.WriteLine("Could not load XSL transform: " + args[1] + "\n\n" + e.Message); return;}

catch (XsltException e) {Console.WriteLine("Could not process the XSL: " + args[1] + "\n\n" + e.Message + "\nOn line " + e.LineNumber + " @ " + e.LinePosition); return;}

// Attempt to transform the XML

try {xsl.Transform(args[0], args[2]);}

catch (XmlException e) {Console.WriteLine("Could not perform transform on: " + "\n\n" + e.Message); return;}

}

[STAThread]

static void Main(string[] args)

{ new Transform(args); }

private void ShowSyntax()

{ Console.Write("XSLTransform Xml-URL Xsl-URL Output.txt"); }

}

XSL Transform XML to CSV

coad — Wed, 14 Apr 2004 04:00:00 GMT

“VocabularyToCSV.xsl”

Since Comma Separated Value (CSV) files are so common, here is a transformation. It requires “Vocabulary.xml” and a translator.

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

<xsl:output method="text" encoding="ISO-8859-1"/>

<xsl:strip-space elements="Set"/>

<xsl:template match="/Vocabulary">Word,Description

<xsl:apply-templates select="Set">

<xsl:sort select="Word"/>

</xsl:apply-templates>

</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="Set">

<xsl:value-of select="Word"/>,"<xsl:value-of select="Desc"/>"<xsl:text>
</xsl:text>

</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

HTML With XML Data Binding

coad — Wed, 14 Apr 2004 03:40:00 GMT

“Vocabulary.html”

This is used in conjunction with “Vocabulary.xml” to demonstrate IE HTML data binding. Without any scripting, this will pull data from the XML file and display it in the HTML page. This is considerably different than the XSLT that converts XML into HTML. Note that this is also a well-formatted XHTML document.

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

<head>

<title>Vocabulary Words</title>

body {font: 10pt verdana;}

table {font: 10pt verdana;}

h1 {font: bold 13pt; color: navy;}

th {color: white; background: darkmagenta;}

</style>

</head>

<body>

<h1>Vocabulary Words</h1>

<thead>

<th>Description</th>

</thead>

<tr>

</tr>

</table>

<p><a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/">Dictionary</a> | <a href="http://thesaurus.reference.com/">Thesaurus</a> | <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/workshop/author/databind/dataconsumer.asp">HTML Data Binding</a></p>

</body>

</html>

XSL Translation from XML to HTML

coad — Wed, 14 Apr 2004 03:34:00 GMT

“Vocabulary.xsl”

This is used in conjunction with “Vocabulary.xml” to demonstrate the power of XSL translation. Put both in the same directory, load the .xml file in IE, and IE will automatically apply the transformation into HTML.

Key points: Translation from XML to HTML, Sorting on the Word elements, and Matching within the Ancor tag

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

<xsl:template match="/Vocabulary">

<html>

<head>

<title>Vocabulary Words</title>

body {font: 10pt verdana;}

table {font: 10pt verdana;}

</style>

</head>

<body>

<h2>Vocabulary Words</h2>

<xsl:apply-templates select="Set">

<xsl:sort select="Word"/>

</xsl:apply-templates>

</body>

</html>

</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="Set">

<p>

<xsl:value-of select="Desc"/>

</p>

</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

Sample XML Data, Vocabulary.xml

coad — Wed, 14 Apr 2004 02:57:00 GMT

“Vocabulary.xml”

This is my first code posting so bear with as they get better. This is a sample XML file that will be used for a number of the other postings.

<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes"?>

<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="Vocabulary.xsl"?>

<Set>

<Word>Prerogative</Word>

<Desc>An exclusive right or privilege held by a person or group, especially a hereditary or official right.</Desc>

</Set>

<Set>

<Word>Inextricably</Word>

<Desc>Unavoidable; inescapable. So intricate or entangled as to make escape impossible. Too involved or complicated to solve.</Desc>

</Set>

<Set>

<Word>Eclectic</Word>

<Desc>Selecting or employing individual elements from a variety of sources, systems, or styles: an eclectic taste in music; an eclectic approach to managing the economy.</Desc>

</Set>

<Set>

<Word>Prolific</Word>

<Desc>Producing abundant works or results: a prolific artist</Desc>

</Set>

</Vocabulary>