Naming Fields

Every field in an input file - including fields in the same region and row - can have its own field element name. All field element names (<field> is the default) include the namespace prefix in the XML output if one was specified.

Field names are determined by two properties - Element Name Source in the Region Type properties, and Field Element Name, as shown in Figure 172.

Figure 172. Sources for Field Names in XML Output

The Element Name Source indicates the origin of the field name used in the XML output when converting the input file. The Field Element Name property specifies the actual value used to name the <field> element.

Using the Element Name Source Property

There are three values for the Element Name Source property:

User-Supplied - Specifies that you will supply names for the <field> element. You can do this by editing the Field Element Name property, or by double-clicking the field element name in the document pane to edit the field name directly in the document pane.

The default value of the Field Element Name property is field. If you use other values for the Element Name Source property, Stylus Studio provides the values for the Field Element Name property.

User-Supplied is the default setting for the Element Name Source property.

From First Row - You can use this setting to take <field> element names from the first row in the region. If you have used the Rows to Skip property to skip rows in a region, the first available region is used to supply the <field> element names.

Consider the following input file:


Make:Model:Year BMW:R1150RS:2004 MZ:Scorpion:1995 Ducati:ST2:1997

If you set Element Name Source to From First Row, the XML output uses Make, Model, and Year for the <field> element names, as shown here:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> 
<root> 
	<row> 
		<Make>BMW</Make> 
		<Model>R1150RS</Model> 
		<Year>2004</Year> 
	</row> 
	<row> 
		<Make>MZ</Make> 
		<Model>Scorpion</Model> 
		<Year>1995</Year> 
	</row> 
	<row> 
		<Make>Ducati</Make> 
		<Model>ST2</Model> 
		<Year>1997</Year> 
	</row> 
</root>

You can specify any row as the source for field names using the Get Field Names from This Row from the row's shortcut menu.

WS-EDI Standard - This setting allows rows and fields to be named based on the WS-EDI Standard level 0. See http://www.ws-edi.org for more information on this standard.

More About Using Rows for Field Names

When you use an existing row as the source for field names in the XML output, Stylus Studio changes the display of that row in the document pane to a darker blue to indicate this, as shown here:

Figure 173. Using a Row for Field Names

In addition, preceding rows in that region, if any, are grayed out, and the value of the Rows to Skip field in the Region Type properties changes to reflect this.

In the event that the first row has fewer names than there are fields in one or more subsequent lines in the file, Stylus Studio names the extra fields <fieldn>, where n is the field number relative to other fields in the row. Also, if the values in the row are not valid XML identifiers, they are converted using the following rules:

Whitespace and nulls are trimmed from both ends

SQL/XML rules are used, except that underscores ("_") are not converted to _x005F_ symbols

Beyond these exceptions, strict rules are used. See section 9.1 (page 91) of http://www.sqlx.org/SQL-XML-documents/5FCD-14-XML-2004-07.pdf.