Xml – How to remove a namespace from an XML document

actionscript-3apache-flexnamespacesweb servicesxml

In my Flex application, I call several .NET WebServices that return XML. However, these WebServices all return XML with a namespace. I cannot read/parse the XML without referencing the namespace, meaning that I have to include the following lines of code in each Class that calls a WebService:

private namespace PCRWebServices = "xxx.somename.web.services";

use namespace PCRWebServices;

I would like to eliminate the need for this static/hard-coded logic simply to read XML from a WebService.

Is there any way to "remove" the namespace from the XML, so that I can read it as a "normal" XML document?

I have a Class that I extend for every WebService call that handles results and faults:

private function faultHandler(event:FaultEvent):void
{

}

private function resultHandler(event:ResultEvent):void
{
    var resultXML:XML = new XML(event.result);
}

I would like to add some logic to the result handler to "convert" the XML. Any ideas?

This what trace(resultXML) returns:

<GetDataResult xmlns="xxx.somename.web.services">
  <DataSet>
    <Data>
      <IdNmb>15</IdNmb>
      <NameTxt>Hello</NameTxt>
    </Data>
    <Data>
      <IdNmb>16</IdNmb>
      <NameTxt>World</NameTxt>
    </Data>
    <Status>
      <Status>Success</Status>
    </Status>
    <ReturnCode>
      <ReturnCode>0</ReturnCode>
    </ReturnCode>
  </DataSet>
</GetDataResult>

Best Answer

Here's another regex solution. It will remove multiple namespaces, not just one.

private function resultHandler(event:ResultEvent):void
{
    var nsRegEx:RegExp = new RegExp(" xmlns(?:.*?)?=\".*?\"", "gim");

    var resultXML:XML = new XML(String(event.result).replace(nsRegEx, ""));        
}

Related Solutions

C# – How to build XML in C#

It depends on the scenario. XmlSerializer is certainly one way and has the advantage of mapping directly to an object model. In .NET 3.5, XDocument, etc. are also very friendly. If the size is very large, then XmlWriter is your friend.

For an XDocument example:

Console.WriteLine(
    new XElement("Foo",
        new XAttribute("Bar", "some & value"),
        new XElement("Nested", "data")));

Or the same with XmlDocument:

XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
XmlElement el = (XmlElement)doc.AppendChild(doc.CreateElement("Foo"));
el.SetAttribute("Bar", "some & value");
el.AppendChild(doc.CreateElement("Nested")).InnerText = "data";
Console.WriteLine(doc.OuterXml);

If you are writing a large stream of data, then any of the DOM approaches (such as XmlDocument/XDocument, etc.) will quickly take a lot of memory. So if you are writing a 100 MB XML file from CSV, you might consider XmlWriter; this is more primitive (a write-once firehose), but very efficient (imagine a big loop here):

XmlWriter writer = XmlWriter.Create(Console.Out);
writer.WriteStartElement("Foo");
writer.WriteAttributeString("Bar", "Some & value");
writer.WriteElementString("Nested", "data");
writer.WriteEndElement();

Finally, via XmlSerializer:

[Serializable]
public class Foo
{
    [XmlAttribute]
    public string Bar { get; set; }
    public string Nested { get; set; }
}
...
Foo foo = new Foo
{
    Bar = "some & value",
    Nested = "data"
};
new XmlSerializer(typeof(Foo)).Serialize(Console.Out, foo);

This is a nice model for mapping to classes, etc.; however, it might be overkill if you are doing something simple (or if the desired XML doesn't really have a direct correlation to the object model). Another issue with XmlSerializer is that it doesn't like to serialize immutable types : everything must have a public getter and setter (unless you do it all yourself by implementing IXmlSerializable, in which case you haven't gained much by using XmlSerializer).

C# – How to Deserialize XML document

How about you just save the xml to a file, and use xsd to generate C# classes?

Write the file to disk (I named it foo.xml)
Generate the xsd: xsd foo.xml
Generate the C#: xsd foo.xsd /classes

Et voila - and C# code file that should be able to read the data via XmlSerializer:

    XmlSerializer ser = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Cars));
    Cars cars;
    using (XmlReader reader = XmlReader.Create(path))
    {
        cars = (Cars) ser.Deserialize(reader);
    }

(include the generated foo.cs in the project)

Best Answer

Related Solutions

C# – How to build XML in C#

C# – How to Deserialize XML document

Related Topic