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Velocity API FeedBlock to xml

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John

Jan 27, 2016 @ 09:18 PM

This question was posted a couple years ago: http://help.hannonhill.com/discussions/velocity-formats/8506-locator-tool-with-feed-block

I was wondering if there has been anything added to cascade that will allow me to convert the string version of the feed into xml searchable by xpath.

Thanks

1. 1 Posted by Ryan Griffith on Jan 28, 2016 @ 01:23 PM

   

   Hi John,

   Currently, we do not provide a helper method to return the feed's contents as XML to be parsed. I was able to locate the related suggestion on our Idea Exchange. I highly recommend voting this up if you would like for it to be considered for a future release.

   That being said, with a little bit of Java magic, I was able to come up with a workaround and successfully convert the XML string into a Document, which can then be used to obtain the root Element and be parsed by the XPath Tool:

   #set ( $feedblock = $_.locateBlock("/path/to/feed/block"))
   
   ## Generate a new StringReader instance using the feed's content.
   #set ( $StringReader = $_.getClass().forName("java.io.StringReader").getConstructors()[0].newInstance($feedblock.feed) )
   
   ## Create a new SAXBuilder instance which will be used to convert the StringBuilder to a Document.
   #set ( $SAXBuilder = $_.getClass().forName("org.jdom.input.SAXBuilder").newInstance() )
   
   ## Obtain the root Element from the built Document.
   #set ( $rootElement = $SAXBuilder.build($StringReader).rootElement )
   
   ## Using the root Element as context, obtain the items in the feed and loop over them
   #set ($items = $_XPathTool.selectNodes($rootElement, "//item"))
   #foreach ( $item in $items )
       $item.getChild("link").value
   #end
   

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2. 2 Posted by John on Jan 29, 2016 @ 03:35 PM

   

   Wow! Thanks a lot. Does exactly what I needed.

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3. 3 Posted by Ryan Griffith on Jan 29, 2016 @ 05:15 PM

   

   Not a problem at all, John. Definitely a little hacky, but I am glad to hear the proposed code did the trick.

   I'm going to go ahead and close this discussion, please feel free to comment or reply to re-open if you have any additional questions.

   Have a great day!

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4. Ryan Griffith closed this discussion on Jan 29, 2016 @ 05:15 PM.