Question

I get the following XML back from an ASP-NET webservice (that alone took me 3 days). But because I’m such an XML nube, I don’t know how to format it into a basic display table. I need it to be in coldfusion because that’s all I understand and my site is a CF site. It uses diffgram which I also know nothing about. But, I’m ready to learn!

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
    <soap:Body>
        <BillingResponse xmlns="http://portal/customer.asmx">       
            <BillingResult>
                <xs:schema id="NewDataSet" xmlns="" xmlns:msdata="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xml-msdata" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
                    <xs:element msdata:IsDataSet="true" msdata:UseCurrentLocale="true" name="NewDataSet">
                        <xs:complexType>
                            <xs:choice maxOccurs="unbounded" minOccurs="0">
                                <xs:element name="Table">
                                    <xs:complexType>
                                        <xs:sequence>
                                            <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="CustomerCode" type="xs:int"/>
                                            <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="ServiceCode" type="xs:int"/>
                                            <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="SubscriberCode" type="xs:string"/>
                                            <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="Status" type="xs:string"/>
                                        </xs:sequence>
                                    </xs:complexType>
                                </xs:element>
                            </xs:choice>
                        </xs:complexType>
                    </xs:element>
                </xs:schema>

                <diffgr:diffgram xmlns:diffgr="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xml-diffgram-v1" xmlns:msdata="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xml-msdata">

                    <NewDataSet xmlns="">
                        <Table diffgr:id="Table1" msdata:rowOrder="0">
                            <CustomerCode>1114309</CustomerCode>
                            <ServiceCode>0</ServiceCode>
                            <SubscriberCode/>
                            <Status/>
                        </Table>
                        <Table diffgr:id="Table2" msdata:rowOrder="1">
                            <CustomerCode>1114309</CustomerCode>
                            <ServiceCode>2</ServiceCode>
                            <SubscriberCode>95205292</SubscriberCode>
                            <Status>OPEN</Status>
                        </Table>
                        <Table diffgr:id="Table3" msdata:rowOrder="2">
                            <CustomerCode>1114309</CustomerCode>
                            <ServiceCode>8</ServiceCode>
                            <SubscriberCode>dageorgetti</SubscriberCode>
                            <Status>1</Status>
                        </Table>
                        <Table diffgr:id="Table4" msdata:rowOrder="3">
                            <CustomerCode>1114309</CustomerCode>
                            <ServiceCode>16</ServiceCode>
                            <SubscriberCode>NTL00711</SubscriberCode>
                            <Status>CLOSED</Status>
                        </Table>
                        <Table diffgr:id="Table5" msdata:rowOrder="4">
                            <CustomerCode>1114309</CustomerCode>
                            <ServiceCode>16</ServiceCode>
                            <SubscriberCode>95205292</SubscriberCode>
                            <Status>CLOSED</Status>
                        </Table>
                        <Table diffgr:id="Table6" msdata:rowOrder="5">
                            <CustomerCode>1114309</CustomerCode>
                            <ServiceCode>16</ServiceCode>
                            <SubscriberCode>95205292</SubscriberCode>
                            <Status>OPEN</Status>
                        </Table>
                        <Table diffgr:id="Table7" msdata:rowOrder="6">
                            <CustomerCode>1114309</CustomerCode>
                            <ServiceCode>4096</ServiceCode>
                            <SubscriberCode>64280452637</SubscriberCode>
                            <Status>OPEN</Status>
                        </Table>
                        <Table diffgr:id="Table8" msdata:rowOrder="7">
                            <CustomerCode>1114309</CustomerCode>
                            <ServiceCode>4096</ServiceCode>
                            <SubscriberCode>64280426643</SubscriberCode>
                            <Status>OPEN</Status>
                        </Table>
                    </NewDataSet>
                </diffgr:diffgram>
            </BillingResult>
        </BillingResponse>
    </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

Any code snippet or help through this horror show would be greatly appreciated

Answer 1

Normally when consuming a SOAP webservice from ColdFusion you would use <cfinvoke> and things would come back in a close-to-native format.

However, and especially when consuming ASP.NET ASMX webservices, I’ve found that the returned XML and ColdFusion’s parser don’t always play nice; so I tend to do the processing manually.

This code is from a method I wrote to make API calls. First, make the HTTP request manually:

<cftry>
    <cfhttp
        url="#wsLocation#"
        result="local.wsResult"
        method="post"
        timeout="#variables.timeout#"
        throwonerror="true"
    >
        <cfhttpparam type="formfield" name="inputName" value="inputValue" />
        <cfhttpparam type="formfield" name="inputName" value="inputValue" />
        <cfhttpparam type="formfield" name="inputName" value="inputValue" />
    </cfhttp>

Then check for common error conditions: (you may run into some-of/all-of/none-of/more-than these)

    <cfif trim(local.wsResult.fileContent) eq "Connection Timeout">
        <cfthrow message="Request timeout while connecting to .Net API" detail="#local.wsResult.statusCode#" />
    </cfif>
    <cfif not isXML(local.wsResult.FileContent)>
        <cfthrow message="ASP.NET WS did not return valid XML." detail="#local.wsResult.FileContent#" />
    </cfif>

Then, parse the returned xml, and return just the part you’re interested in:

    <cfset local.wsResponse = xmlParse(local.wsResult.Filecontent) />
    <cfset local.rspContainer = local.wsResponse['soap:envelope']['soap:body'].BillingResponse.BillingResult />

    <cfcatch>
        <cfset local.arguments = arguments />
        <cfset errorEmail(cfcatch, local) />
        <cfreturn "" />
    </cfcatch>
</cftry>
<cfreturn local.rspContainer />

This would return the <BillingResponse> node and everything inside it.

Then you need to parse that for the data you need. You could do it with XPath expressions and the XMLSearch function, or if the data is simple, just grab it manually.

The DiffGram xml you reference is probably because you’re returning a DataTable object in your .Net code. Here’s how I handle that in ColdFusion:

dataContainer = apiRequest(whatever); //calls the method above

First make sure there are child elements to get:

local.emptySet = QueryNew("GivenName,Surname,FileAs,CompanyName");
if (not structKeyExists(local.dataContainer, "DocumentElement")){ return local.emptySet; }
//emptySet is whatever object you're converting the xml into, only with no data, so 
//maybe an empty query or structure or something.

Then get the array of child elements:

local.items = local.dataContainer.DocumentElement.XmlChildren;

In my case, I’m creating a query, so I add enough rows to the query to hold all of the data:

//create enough rows in the query to store the contact data
QueryAddRow(local.emptySet, arrayLen(local.items));

Then loop over each node in the array of child elements, copying the value to the query. The variable local.fieldList is a list of xml nodes inside each row in your DataTable, and it will use the list to get each field. The outer loop iterates over the rows in the DataTable, and the inner loop iterates over the columns in the row. I’ve lopped off a lot from my list to keep the code relatively small, but there’s no problem with making the list large.

//popuplate the query
for (local.i = 1; local.i lte arrayLen(local.items); local.i = local.i + 1){
    local.fieldList = "GivenName,Surname,FileAs,CompanyName";
    for (local.j = 1; local.j lte listLen(local.fieldList); local.j = local.j + 1){
        local.key = listGetAt(local.fieldList, local.j);
        if (structKeyExists(local.items[local.i], local.key)){
            QuerySetCell(local.emptySet, local.key, local.items[local.i][local.key].XmlText, local.i);
        }
    }
}
return local.emptySet;

Oh, and this also assumes that the field names in your DataTable are exactly the same as the column names in the query that it’s copying them to.