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classToXMLFragment() Operation

Syntax

 
set aBlob = anObject.classToXMLFragment()
set aBlob = anObject.classToXMLFragment(options)

Semantics

The operation takes any object (anObject) and tries to map it to an XML fragment. The fragment structure is given by the class definition of anObject. If this is not possible an error is raised (e.g. XML parser errors, invalid mappings, etc.)

By default the following mapping rules apply:

  • Class attributes are mapped to XML attributes.

  • Association ends are mapped to XML elements.

These default rules can be overridden by using <<XMLElement>>, <<XMLAttribute>> and <<XMLCharacters>> stereotypes on UML class attributes and UML association ends.
More about these mapping rules, stereotypes and tagged values (e.g. for number and date & time formatting) can be found at XML - UML Class Mapping.
Builder 7.5.0 Additionally, you can hide attributes from being serialized by applying stereotype <<E2EPrivate>>. Refer to AttributeSpecification > Hiding Attributes From Interfaces for more information.

A conversion with operation classToXMLFragment() always returns an object of type Blob. To display this data as a String you need to transcode it first (see /wiki/spaces/BRIDGE/pages/19268798).

Substitutables

anObject

Target object, can be any complex object. However, simple types and arrays are not supported, since they do not map naturally to a well formed XML document.

options

This optional parameter is an object of type XMLComposeOptions.

xml_compose_options.png

Its attributes are:

Attribute

Type

Description

Example

prolog

Array of String

The string values are inserted right before the root element of the generated document. This mechanism can be used to insert processing instructions (e.g. DTD and Schema references), comments, entities or any other prolog you may think of. However, be aware that using prolog arrays makes it easy to generate non-well-formed documents.


timezone

String

Time zone string as specified in the Date and Time Formatting. The timezone is used to print dateTime expressions. If no timezone is given, UTC is used.
If " local" is used, the date/time is printed relative to the local timezone of the server, e.g. 2012-10-01T12:36:47.0+02:00 (the timezone of the server is UTC+02:00).

"Australia/Melbourne", "CET", "Etc/GMT+10"

dateFormatString

String

A format string to be used when printing DateTime values as xs:date (e.g. %F to print a date without timezone).
The allowed formats can be found in Date and Time Formatting. If nothing is defined, the XSD standard is used.

%F

encoding

String

Encoding of the target xml. Default encoding is UTF-8.
For a list of possible encodings see Charset Definitions.

"UTF-8"

rootName

String

Name of the generated XML root element. Use this tagged value to override the default behavior specified on the composite (see Frontend Components).

TXTRAW01

rootNamespace

String

Name of the namespace of the generated XML root element.


Examples

 
set xmlBlob = myAddress.classToXMLFragment();
⬇️

Example File (Builder project E2E Action Language/XML): XML.zip

<your example path>\E2E Action Language\XML\uml\xmlSimpleConversions.xml
<your example path>\E2E Action Language\XML\uml\xmlComplexConversions.xml

The following action script serializes an object of type Address, provided that you have defined an input object node named myAddress of type Address in the activity diagram.

set xmlBlob = myAddress.classToXMLFragment();

The sample XML fragment below illustrates the mapping executed by classToXMLFragment(). The object myAddress of type Address (see class diagram) is mapped the depicted XML fragment:

   <street>Lautengartenstr. 12</street>
   <city>Basel</city>
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