Question

So I am trying to edit an xml (output is an xml) using SAX parsing in VB6 (for an ancient COM component). I would prefer to use DOM parsing but the size of the xml (over 20MB’s potentially) forces me to use SAX. I am relatively new to VB6 and I have no experience in SAX parsing. I have looked around online but even the best resource I have found (http://www.developerfusion.com/article/84405/sax-and-vb-6/) gives me little insight into how to combine grandchilren tags with existing attributes to make one longer attribute for a renamed tag.

I have the basic framework setup (as shown on the linked site). I think I might be able to limit most of the heavy lifting to two or three sub procedures (the first four lines in _startDocument, grab the description tag with _startElement, put the description into the function tag with endElement). However my lack of VB6/SAX knowledge is really hurting me here. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Here is what the XML looks like Now;

<errordetails>
<error desc=”Count: 2”/>
<error desc=”System: System X”/>
<error desc=”Reason: Reason X”/>
   <functions>
      <function name=”x1” Description=”y1”>
         <violations count="2">
            <violation><source>admin</source><description>the first reason</description></violation>
            <violation><source>admin</source><description>the second reason</description></violation>
         </violations>  
      </function>
      <function name=”x2” Description=”y2”>
         <violations count="1">
           <violation><source>admin</source><description>another reason</description></violation>
        </violations>   
      </function>
   </functions>
</errordetails>

Here is what I want the xml to look like;

<errordetails>
<error desc=”Count: 2”/>
<error desc=”System: System X”/>
<error desc=”Reason: Reason X”/>
<error desc=”FunctionName: x1, FunctionDescription: y1, FunctionReason: the first reason, FunctionReason: the second reason”/>
<error desc=”FunctionName: x2, FunctionDescription: y2, FunctionReason: another reason"/>
</errordetails>

Answer 1

Have you read things like the old article The Joy of SAX: a Visual Basic Sample?

It is hard to tell you much more. SAX is pretty simple really, you just need to approach it much as you should any VB6 Form, as a state machine. This means most of the logic you’ll write will manage state, like accumulating and emitting transformed data as it is fed to you through the events.