ColdFusion

1
ColdFusions XML Capabilities

• Maryland CFUG
• April 12, 2005

Presented by Doug Ward
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Agenda

• What is XML?
• Creating XML
• Parsing XML
• Searching XML
• Transforming XML
• XML examples

3
Sources

• Programming ColdFusion MX, 2nd Edition, by Rob
  Brooks-Bilson
• Utilizing XML and XSLT in ColdFusion MX, Nate
  Weiss
• On Using XML Well Creating a dynamic XML menu,
  by Ben Forta

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A Definition of XML
What is XML?

• XML is a tag-based markup language for
  describing data

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How XML is similar to HTML
What is XML?

• XML and HTML are both subsets of SGML (Standards
  Generalized Markup Language)
• XML and HTML are both plain-text formats
  utilizing tags (called elements in XML) and
  attributes

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How XML is different from HTML
What is XML?

• XML demands strict adherence to correct syntax
• XML doesnt have anything to do with how the data
  it describes is displayed
• XML is extensible

7
Creating an XML Document
Creating XML

• The XML declaration
• XML comments
• The root element
• Nested child elements
• Element attributes

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Generating XML in ColdFusion
Creating XML

• Generating XML using the ltCFXMLgt tag
• Using the XmlFormat() tag to sanitize strings

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The XML Document Object
Parsing XML

• The XML document object is a ColdFusion MX
  datatype
• The XML document object shares many similarities
  with ColdFusion structures and arrays
• The XmlParse() function

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Referencing an XML Document Object
Parsing XML

• Basic view
• DOM (Document Object Model) node view

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Basic View
Parsing XML

• Top-level document object and the root structure
• Element structures
• Using structure and array functions to access
  elements of the XML document object

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DOM Node View
Parsing XML

• In the DOM node view, XML documents are
  represented as a hierarchical tree of nodes
• Each node in the tree consists of a node name, a
  node type, and a node value

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Matching XML Data with XPath
Searching XML

• XPath is a W3C recommendation outlining a
  language for addressing parts of an XML document
• ColdFusion supports XPath as a query tool for
  extracting data from XML document objects via the
  XmlSearch() function

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Transforming XML with XSLT
Transforming XML

• XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language
  Transformation) works with XSL (Extensible
  Stylesheet Language) to perform the actual
  transformations
• ColdFusion MX uses the XMLTransform() function to
  perform an XSLT transformation on an XML string
  or document object

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XML Examples

• Dynamic XML menus
• WDDX data files

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XML Resources

• www.xml.com
• www.oasis-open.org
• XML and XSLT in ColdFusion MX
• On using XML well