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Transform XML

Activity

The Transform XML activity allows you to transform an input XML document into the output specified by the given XSLT File shared configuration resource.

Normally, transformation of data occurs by mapping process variables to an activity’s input and applying XPath expressions to perform any transformation. If you have an XSLT file that you are using for transformations, or if an outside source supplies an XSLT file, this activity allows you to use the XSLT file instead of manually creating the mappings.

For more information about creating and editing XSLT files, see the XSLT specification at http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt. For more information about creating an XSLT File shared configuration resource see XSLT File.

See Example of Transforming XML for an example of using the Transform XML activity.

Configuration

The Configuration tab has the following fields.

Field	Description
Name	The name to appear as the label for the activity in the process definition.
Description	Short description of the activity.
Stylesheet	The XSLT File shared configuration resource to use when transforming the XML. You can also specify an XSLT stylesheet in the stylesheet input element, if desired. Stylesheets specified in the activity input will override the stylesheet specified in this field. See XSLT File for more information.
Input and Output Style	Specifies whether the input and output is binary data, text, or an XML tree.
XSLT Engine	Specifies the XSLT Engine to be used for the transformation. Following are the XSLT engines available in the drop down list: − TIBCO XML - This is the default XSLT engine provided by TIBCO. − Saxon-B XSLT 2.0 - This engine provides basic conformance to XSLT 2.0. The engine provides all features of the languages except schema-aware processes. See http://saxon.sourceforge.net/ for details about the Saxon-B XSLT 2.0 engine.

Input

The input for the activity is the following.

Input Item	Datatype	Description
xmlBytesIn or xmlString or xmlTree	binary	The XML to transform. If the input/output style is set to binary, this element is named xmlBytesIn. If the input/output style is set to text, this element is named xmlString. If the input/output style is set to tree, this element is named xmlTree. When an xmlTree is the input element, you can drag and drop an XML tree into the (any Element) to map a copy of an XML tree to the activity’s input. See Figure 31 for an example of this.
styleSheet	string	This optional element contains the XSLT stylesheet to use to transform the XML input. This stylesheet overrides the stylesheet specified in the Stylesheet field on the Configuration tab.
parameter	complex	This repeating element contains the input parameters for the style sheet. Each input parameter is specified as name/value pairs. The name is a string that corresponds to the name of the parameter specified in the XSLT stylesheet parameter list.
name	string	The name of the stylesheet input parameter.
value	string	The value to supply for the specified stylesheet input parameter.
isXMLDocument	boolean	Specifies whether the parameter is an XML document.

Output

The output for the activity is the following.

Output Item	Datatype	Description
xmlString or xmlOutput or treeOutput	text or binary or complex	A binary or text value or an XML tree containing the output schema specified by the XSLT file. The element is named xmlString and is of type text when text is selected for the input/output style on the Configuration tab. The element is named xmlOutput and is of type binary when binary is selected. The element is named treeOutput and is a complex type when tree is selected.

Error Output

The Error Output tab lists the possible exceptions that can be thrown by this activity. See TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks Error Codes for more information about error codes and corrective action to take.

Exception	Thrown When...
XMLTransformException	An exception occurred when transforming the data.
UnsupportedEncodingException	Data was supplied that is encoded in an unsupported encoding. You can specify any encoding supported by Java on the system where TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks is running.
MissingByteCountException

Example of Transforming XML

The following is an example of using the Transform XML activity to change an input XML document into the desired output schema. In this example, books are cataloged and processed. The user enters a book’s information into a web interface, and the web input form supplies a new catalog number and the date it was entered into the catalog. The process definition accepts the incoming web request, transforms the XML and adds the catalog number and date, enters the data into a database, then returns the results to the user. Figure 30 illustrates the process definition for this example.

Figure 30 A process definition using the Transform XML activity

The Transform XML activity uses an XSLT file that accepts two input parameters, catalogNumber and catalogDate. These input parameters are added as elements to the Book schema. The following is the source of the XSLT File shared configuration resource for the example Transform XML activity:

 

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

   xmlns:pfx="http://www.books.org">

<xsl:param name="catalogNumber"> <!--type="string"--></xsl:param>

<xsl:param name="catalogDate"> <!--type="string"--></xsl:param>

<xsl:template match="/*">

   <pfx:BookStore>

      <xsl:for-each select="Book">

         <xsl:call-template name="handle-book">

            <xsl:with-param name="inDate" select="$catalogDate"/>

         </xsl:call-template>

      </xsl:for-each>

   </pfx:BookStore>

</xsl:template>

<xsl:template name ="handle-book">

   <xsl:param name="inDate"> <!--type="string"--></xsl:param>

      <pfx:Book>

         <pfx:Title><xsl:value-of select="Title"/></pfx:Title>

         <pfx:Author><xsl:value-of select="Author"/></pfx:Author>

         <pfx:Date><xsl:value-of select="$inDate"/></pfx:Date>

         <pfx:ISBN><xsl:value-of

            select="$catalogNumber"/></pfx:ISBN>

         <pfx:Publisher><xsl:value-of

            select=""Cloud Software Group, Inc./></pfx:Publisher>

      </pfx:Book>

</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

When you configure the Transform XML activity, you specify the incoming XML to transform any input parameters to the schema. Figure 31 illustrates the input for the example Transform XML activity.

Figure 31 Input for the example Transform XML activity

The stylesheet has two input parameters. The XPath if statement is used to place the correct names and values into the correct parameters. Each parameter is specified as a name/value pair. Notice that the name of each parameter corresponds to the name specified for that parameter in the XSLT file.

The output of the Transform XML activity is a text string containing the XML. In our example process definition, we must insert the transformed data into a database table. To map the transformed data into the database UPDATE statement, the data must first be represented as a schema. To do this, we use the Parse XML activity to parse the output of Transform XML into an XML schema.

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