Need help with XMLToCursor() 1

[Gweniviere]

Hello everyone,

I am consuming an XML response from a web service. Everything is working great with the exception that when I convert the XML to a cursor fields that contain _numbers_ starting with 0 the field that XMLToCursor() creates is numeric and the the leading '0' is dropped. (think of a zip code 09810)

My question is, is there an easy way to instruct XMLToCursor() to force all incoming fields to type Character?

I'm not getting a schema from the service and while _I think_ I could write one and try to force XMLToCursor() to use it, I would prefer not to have to do that.

Thanks for any help you may provide.

 

[Olaf Doschke]

If no schema is given, it is inferred (that's just an euphemism for "guessed").

And there is no flag indicating to VFP, that leading zeros are a premise for a string field.

You can indeed create a cursor with char fields to import:

Create Cursor curtest (zip c(5), enterdate D)
Insert into curtest values ('09876',Date())
CursorToXML('curTest','lcXML')
Create Cursor curTest2 (zip c(5), enterdate c(10))
XMLToCursor(lcXML,'curTest2',8192) && flag 8192 is important here
Browse

Bye, Olaf.

 

[Gweniviere]

Thank you Olaf. Not the answer I was hoping for, but your response was helpful.

Enjoy the weekend.

 

[Olaf Doschke]

Thanks,

I was already, coming back from a family gathering.

I assume you would rather want to taky any xml in as char. It's not impossible to parse out the field names an xml file contains and then start with all M or C(255) fields.

But in the end you need to know what field types to expect from some web service call.

As long as it's a soap web service there are other ways than to use XMLTOCURSOR. But if the service lacks a schema definition there's also no magic soap can do. Take a shot at Tools->Task Pane->XML Web Services

Bye, Olaf.