What is an XML Action?

For the full list of XML action

Creating XML Actions

1. Click and drag the 

   Insert excerpt
   _action_xml _action_xml nopanel true

    icon from the toolbar onto the canvas
2. Enter a name for the XML action, then select Create Action
3. In the XML action 

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   _property_settings _property_settings nopanel true

    on the right, populate the following details:

4. 

XPath Syntax

See XML and XPath and XPath Syntax for examples of how different XPath expressions provide different results. 

Output Attributes

Add a list of attributes to be returned by the XML action, using the value _result. followed by the Attribute Expression Syntax (see below) and the name of the element/attribute required. To add an Output Attribute, click the 

Attribute Expression Syntax

XML Namespaces

XML Namespaces provide a method to avoid element name conflicts by ensuring they are unique. XML documents containing namespaces are supported.

For more information on XML Namespaces, see https://www.w3schools.com/xml/xml_namespaces.asp and XML Namespace. Also, see Namespaces in the Example XML below.

Example XML

<root xmlns:h="http://example.com/schema"> 
	<main page="PF Main Page"> 
		<h:title name="PF Title">PF Title Text">
			<h:datarow> 
				<h:data h:initials="AA">Alistair Andrews<data>
				<h:data h:initials="BB">Bert Brown</data> 
			</h:datarow> 
		</h:title> 
	</main> 
</root>

XPath

/root/main/title 

Results

The following examples show how to reference the returned XPath's XML data structure in an Output Attribute:

Note the use of:

• ^ to traverse to the immediate parent element
• . to traverse to the immediate child element

• the listToString function to handle multiple matching child elements/attributes

Namespace Example

<root xmlns:h="http://example.com/schema"> 
	<main page="PF Main Page"> 
		<h:title name="PF Title" h:id="1007">PF Title Text
			<h:datarow> 
				<h:data h:initials="AA">Alistair Andrews</h:data>
				<h:data h:initials="BB">Bert Brown</h:data> 
			</h:datarow> 
		</h:title> 
	</main> 
</root>

XPath

Within path expressions, namespaces are referred to using semicolons. 

• /root/main/h:title

A record is created for each element returned by the path. Therefore, we do not recommend returning the root as this only returns a single record.

Results

Within attribute expressions, a $ is used instead of the normal : namespace notation.

The namespace prefix used here 'h' must be configured in the XML Namespace.

Learn More

• XML Namespace
• XML Action Configuration
• XML Validate Action Configuration
• XML Schema Definition Properties

Worked Example

Here is a worked example using an XML file from BBC News (https://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/technology/rss.xml).

In this example, we are using:  

• A Shop News screen containing a blank grid and a button  - this screen was created using the Multi-tile template

Checkpoint

Image Modified

XML Action Setup

1. Click on the 

1. Input Expression: in.body
2. Path: /rss/channel/item

3. Output Attributes:
   

   Code Block
   theme Emacs title Name: Title, Type: String
   _result.title

   
   

   Code Block
   theme Emacs title Name: Description, Type: Bigstring
   _result.description

   
   

   Code Block
   theme Emacs title Name: Link, Type: String
   _result.link

   
   

   Code Block
   theme Emacs title Name: ID, Type: String
   _NULL

   
   

   Code Block
   theme Emacs title Name: Date, Type: Datetime
   do( $dater = replaceAll(_result.pubDate, " GMT", ""), $dater = substring($dater, 6), toDate($dater, "dd MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss") )

   
   

   Code Block
   theme Emacs title Name: Source, Type: String
   _result.^.title

   
   

Screen Setup

1. Open the Shop News screen
2. Click on 

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   _attributes _attributes nopanel true

    in the toolbar, then select the News table you created earlier
3. In the Available Attributes selector, select all attributes and drag them onto the screen, then choose to display the data as a 

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   _grid _grid nopanel true

Testing

1. On the Shop News screen,

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   _lock _lock nopanel true

    the screen and click the Start RSS Feed button
2. If the Actionflow is working, the News grid should contain all of the BBC News data