Creating XML from fixed length text file using XSL

[Karan Jain]

Hi,
I would like to convert a fixed length text file to XML using XSL.
I got a sample code but its in ASP.
http://www.devx.com/getHelpOn/10MinuteSolution/20362/0/page/1

I have a similar requirement but i am not able to find equivalent APIs in Java.

Any help is appreciated.
Thanks,
Karan

[Amit M Tank]

use Xalan

[Rahul Bhattacharjee]

I think using XSL you can convert an XML to any other format.May be text or any other XML form.

But I do not know of anything that would convert a text chunk to XML.For that any markup generator is sufficient.Like Apache's Velocity.

[William Brogden]

The ServingXML toolkit appears to be exactly what you are looking for. I found it while doing research for this article.

Bill

[Karan Jain]

Thanks for the reply.

I am actually very new to J2EE and XML.
Just wanted to check if
http://www.topxml.com/xsltStylesheets/xslt_non_XML.asp would help me.
If this will help me, How to invoke this XSL using the input text file to get the XML back? I mean to say which Java api will do it for me.
Will JDOM can help me with this?

Thanks,
Karan
[ July 05, 2007: Message edited by: Karan Jain ]

[William Brogden]

No need to get involved with JDOM, the standard Java library has all you need. Look at the javax.xml.transform package to start.

Bill

[Karan Jain]

Hi,
I am not able to write the code to pass text file object (or string) and xsl in an API to give me back a XML.

Any sample code is appreciated.

Thanks...

[Roseanne Zhang]

XSLT only works with xml file, it does NOT work with your non-xml-text-file, period!

Think alternatives!

Thanks!
[ July 09, 2007: Message edited by: Roseanne Zhang ]

[Karan Jain]

Thanks Roseanne for clearing this out.
I was thinking in that direction looking at the an example on
http://www.topxml.com/xsltStylesheets/xslt_non_XML.asp
Please have a look and let me know if they are using some customize api for the same.

Thanks...
[ July 09, 2007: Message edited by: Roseanne Zhang ]

[Roseanne Zhang]

1) Download the source
2) Take a look at the file FixedLangthTextToXML,xml
3) You should know the trick it is using immediately, and you should know what I said above is true.

here is the trick:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE data [
<!ENTITY resourceA SYSTEM "FixedLengthTextToXML.txt">
]>
<data>
&resourceA; 
</data>

They used an entity to put the non-xml-text into the <data></data> tag to make it XML first. Of course, you can do the same.

To tell you the truth, I don't like such trick...

[Roseanne Zhang]

You can use JavaScript/Perl/Ruby or whatever to do the work in a more flexible way instead to coarce xsl to do something it is not supposed to do.

[Rahul Bhattacharjee]

Originally posted by Karan Jain:
Hi,
I am not able to write the code to pass text file object (or string) and xsl in an API to give me back a XML.

As Roseanne Zhang mentioned its not possible.I have also mentioned this in my first post.

Why do not you try Apache's Velocity ?

First you have to parse the text file and pick up the values that you require to construct the XML and put those in some java bean instance.

Write a velocity template file to reflect the structure of the final XML file.

Now use velocity engine to generate the XML with the bean as input to that.

[Karan Jain]

Thanks Roseanne and Rahul for your valuable inputs. Sorry i didn't realize the trick.

Thanks and regards,
Karan