Home Integrator guide General rules of processing of XML data
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Getting XML data into the platform

General rules of processing of XML data

Description

As you know elastic.io iPaaS uses common data format for messages that are transferred between components and it is JSON. Common format allows re-usability of the components due to standardisation, however, you have following possibilities to represent XML data in elastic.io:

XML converted to and from JSON

When XML data is coming into the system it will be parsed into a JSON. JSON has some advantages and disadvantages compared to XML, however, JSON vs. XML discussion i s out of the scope of that article, more information can be found here.

Internally we use xml2js library to transform the XML to JSON (if the transformation is required, see this article for more information) with following settings:

Setting Name Value
trim false
normalize false
explicitArray false
normalizeTags false
attrkey "_attr"
tagNameProcessors Here we replace all : with - to avoid conflicts in mapper processing

More information on configuration options and their semantics you can find here.

Here you can see some of the examples of such transformation:

Incoming XML

<purchaseOrder orderDate="1999-10-20">
    <shipTo country="US">
        <name>Alice Smith</name>
        <street>123 Maple Street</street>
        <city>Mill Valley</city>
        <state>CA</state>
        <zip>90952</zip>
    </shipTo>
    <billTo country="US">
        <name>Robert Smith</name>
        <street>8 Oak Avenue</street>
        <city>Old Town</city>
        <state>PA</state>
        <zip>95819</zip>
    </billTo>
    <comment>Hurry, my lawn is going wild!</comment>
    <items>
        <item partNum="872-AA">
            <productName>Lawnmower</productName>
            <quantity>1</quantity>
            <USPrice>148.95</USPrice>
            <comment>Confirm this is electric</comment>
        </item>
        <item partNum="926-AA">
            <productName>Baby Monitor</productName>
            <quantity>1</quantity>
            <USPrice>39.98</USPrice>
            <shipDate>1999-05-21</shipDate>
        </item>
    </items>
</purchaseOrder>

Resulting JSON

{
  "purchaseOrder": {
    "_attr": {
      "orderDate": "1999-10-20"
    },
    "shipTo": {
      "_attr": {
        "country": "US"
      },
      "name": "Alice Smith",
      "street": "123 Maple Street",
      "city": "Mill Valley",
      "state": "CA",
      "zip": "90952"
    },
    "billTo": {
      "_attr": {
        "country": "US"
      },
      "name": "Robert Smith",
      "street": "8 Oak Avenue",
      "city": "Old Town",
      "state": "PA",
      "zip": "95819"
    },
    "comment": "Hurry, my lawn is going wild!",
    "items": {
      "item": [
        {
          "_attr": {
            "partNum": "872-AA"
          },
          "productName": "Lawnmower",
          "quantity": "1",
          "USPrice": "148.95",
          "comment": "Confirm this is electric"
        },
        {
          "_attr": {
            "partNum": "926-AA"
          },
          "productName": "Baby Monitor",
          "quantity": "1",
          "USPrice": "39.98",
          "shipDate": "1999-05-21"
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

And here is more complicated SOAP envelope sample, incoming XML:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<SOAP-ENV:Envelope xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
    <SOAP-ENV:Header>
        <Configuration Supplier="TT" FlowId="abc123">
            <ApiHost>https://int.foo.com</ApiHost>
            <ApiKey>foo</ApiKey>
            <ApiSecret>bar</ApiSecret>
            <Currency>USD</Currency>
        </Configuration>
    </SOAP-ENV:Header>
    <SOAP-ENV:Body>
        <OTA_HotelAvailRQ xmlns="http://www.opentravel.org/OTA/2003/05" EchoToken="2590cbc9-50f2-4161-babb-c97cc07dfe7d"
                          PrimaryLangID="en-US" TimeStamp="2016-12-05T01:10:14.057-08:00" Version="1.0">
            <POS>
                <Source>
                    <RequestorID ID="GOOGLE" ID_Context="BAR" Type="18"/>
                </Source>
            </POS>
        </OTA_HotelAvailRQ>
    </SOAP-ENV:Body>
</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>

Resulting JSON:

{
  "SOAP-ENV-Envelope": {
    "_attr": {
      "xmlns:SOAP-ENV": "http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
    },
    "SOAP-ENV-Header": {
      "Configuration": {
        "_attr": {
          "Supplier": "TT",
          "FlowId": "abc123"
        },
        "ApiHost": "https://int.foo.com",
        "ApiKey": "foo",
        "ApiSecret": "bar",
        "Currency": "USD"
      }
    },
    "SOAP-ENV-Body": {
      "OTA_HotelAvailRQ": {
        "_attr": {
          "xmlns": "http://www.opentravel.org/OTA/2003/05",
          "EchoToken": "2590cbc9-50f2-4161-babb-c97cc07dfe7d",
          "PrimaryLangID": "en-US",
          "TimeStamp": "2016-12-05T01:10:14.057-08:00",
          "Version": "1.0"
        },
        "POS": {
          "Source": {
            "RequestorID": {
              "_attr": {
                "ID": "GOOGLE",
                "ID_Context": "BAR",
                "Type": "18"
              }
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

XML transferred as attachment

You can accept, process and send XML data as a message attachment. Attachment is an external data that is stored externally (inside the e.io cluster) and referenced in elastic.io message under the attachments node.

When processing XML as attachment, it will be stored as it is, won’t be validated or parsed and available to every component that would like to read/parse/validate/transform it, however default data transformation components (e.g. mapper) will not understand it and won’t be able to work with it out-of-the-box.

XML accepted as RAW in the body

In case you need the XML in the body to stay intact and passed along to the next step you can use the use raw query parameter (?raw=true) like below:

curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/xml" \
  -d '<foo>Hello XML!</foo>' \
  https://in.platform.address/hooks/your-hook?raw=true

This scenario only would work in case when XML is being posted to the webhook.