Web-Dev - Joel Lipman .Com

Add attribute xsl:nil=true on empty elements using XSLT

: Joel Lipman; XML Stylesheet Language Transformations; 18 August 2014; Hits: 10133

What?
An article on how to declare an XML element as NULL using the attribute "xsi:nil". I'm going to use a very short example by providing a blank date of birth value:

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-- What I have:
<DATE_OF_BIRTH />
<DATE_OF_BIRTH_EUROPEANFORMAT>//</DATE_OF_BIRTH_EUROPEANFORMAT>

-- What I want:
<DATE_OF_BIRTH xsi:nil="true" />
<DATE_OF_BIRTH_EUROPEANFORMAT xsi:nil="true" />

-- What I have:
<DATE_OF_BIRTH />
<DATE_OF_BIRTH_EUROPEANFORMAT>>//</DATE_OF_BIRTH_EUROPEANFORMAT>
-- What I want:
<DATE_OF_BIRTH xsi:nil="true" />
<DATE_OF_BIRTH_EUROPEANFORMAT xsi:nil="true" />

Why?
Outputting from SITS:Vision to our staging environment, the application would only output blank values using single tags so we had to find a place to introduce it. On strings this has little worth, but on dates which could be NULL, this was necessary (unless we interpreted dates as strings which we don't want to do):

Category: XML Stylesheet Language Transformations :: Article: 578

: Joel Lipman; Extensible Markup Language; 13 August 2014; Hits: 2529

XSD Elements

Element	Explanation
all	Specifies that the child elements can appear in any order. Each child element can occur 0 or 1 time
annotation	Specifies the top-level element for schema comments
any	Enables the author to extend the XML document with elements not specified by the schema
anyAttribute	Enables the author to extend the XML document with attributes not specified by the schema
appinfo	Specifies information to be used by the application (must go inside annotation)
attribute	Defines an attribute
attributeGroup	Defines an attribute group to be used in complex type definitions
choice	Allows only one of the elements contained in the declaration to be present within the containing element
complexContent	Defines extensions or restrictions on a complex type that contains mixed content or elements only
complexType	Defines a complex type element
documentation	Defines text comments in a schema (must go inside annotation)
element	Defines an element
extension	Extends an existing simpleType or complexType element
field	Specifies an XPath expression that specifies the value used to define an identity constraint
group	Defines a group of elements to be used in complex type definitions
import	Adds multiple schemas with different target namespace to a document
include	Adds multiple schemas with the same target namespace to a document
key	Specifies an attribute or element value as a key (unique, non-nullable, and always present) within the containing element in an instance document
keyref	Specifies that an attribute or element value correspond to those of the specified key or unique element
list	Defines a simple type element as a list of values
notation	Describes the format of non-XML data within an XML document
redefine	Redefines simple and complex types, groups, and attribute groups from an external schema
restriction	Defines restrictions on a simpleType, simpleContent, or a complexContent
schema	Defines the root element of a schema
selector	Specifies an XPath expression that selects a set of elements for an identity constraint
sequence	Specifies that the child elements must appear in a sequence. Each child element can occur from 0 to any number of times
simpleContent	Contains extensions or restrictions on a text-only complex type or on a simple type as content and contains no elements
simpleType	Defines a simple type and specifies the constraints and information about the values of attributes or text-only elements
union	Defines a simple type as a collection (union) of values from specified simple data types
unique	Defines that an element or an attribute value must be unique within the scope

XSD Restrictions/Facets for Datatypes

Constraint	Description
enumeration	Defines a list of acceptable values
fractionDigits	Specifies the maximum number of decimal places allowed. Must be equal to or greater than zero
length	Specifies the exact number of characters or list items allowed. Must be equal to or greater than zero
maxExclusive	Specifies the upper bounds for numeric values (the value must be less than this value)
maxInclusive	Specifies the upper bounds for numeric values (the value must be less than or equal to this value)
maxLength	Specifies the maximum number of characters or list items allowed. Must be equal to or greater than zero
minExclusive	Specifies the lower bounds for numeric values (the value must be greater than this value)
minInclusive	Specifies the lower bounds for numeric values (the value must be greater than or equal to this value)
minLength	Specifies the minimum number of characters or list items allowed. Must be equal to or greater than zero
pattern	Defines the exact sequence of characters that are acceptable
totalDigits	Specifies the maximum number of digits allowed. Must be greater than zero
whiteSpace	Specifies how white space (line feeds, tabs, spaces, and carriage returns) is handled

Source(s):

w3schools.com

SITS: Export field code and name

: Joel Lipman; Extensible Markup Language; 12 August 2014; Hits: 2854

Applies to:

Microsoft Windows 7 Enterprise
SITS:Vision Students (v8.7.0)

What?
You might be able to work it out from the online manuals but it took me a while, we wanted to bring back both the code and the lookup value in our XML to our Staging environment.

Why?
Let's take the country of birth of a person as an example as it is expected to be a long list and where just using the parameter &S is not workable. Instead I want to use &G[] and get both the code and the lookup value:

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-- What I have: no export format
<stu_codc>5826</stu_codc>

-- What I could have: export format set to get lookup value
-- &GCOD_NAME.COD.SRS
<stu_codc>England</stu_codc>

-- What I want: export format to get multiple values
-- &G[COD.SRS:•<•<COD_CODE.COD•>•>|•<•<COD_NAME.COD•>•>]
<stu_codc>5826|England</stu_codc>

-- What I have: no export format
<stu_codc>5826</stu_codc>
-- What I could have: export format set to get lookup value
-- &GCOD_NAME.COD.SRS
<stu_codc>England</stu_codc>
-- What I want: export format to get multiple values
-- &G[COD.SRS:•<•<COD_CODE.COD•>•>|•<•<COD_NAME.COD•>•>]
<stu_codc>5826|England</stu_codc>

How?

Category: Extensible Markup Language :: Article: 575

: Joel Lipman; Extensible Markup Language; 08 August 2014; Hits: 2440

What?
Trying to export a STU record but I want to use the XET template I created rather than the pre-installed XML export formats. When I try to export using data format XET, the system has never heard of it.

Why?
To test the XET I created, I want to see what the resulting XML will look like so that my post-staging phase can be developed as it will know what the data and label fields look like.

How?

: Joel Lipman; Web-Development; 03 April 2014; Hits: 6261

What?
There are a lot of articles & posts out there that cover the same topic, but as this took me the good part of an hour just to find out, I'm posting it here so I never have to look for it again.

A client changed their website domain address and wanted any person visiting the old domain to be redirected to the new domain.

Why?
I warned that a 301 site gets removed from the Google directory and true to form Google have removed it. Not sure why nobody believed me when I raised the alarm but hey-ho.

How?
I'm going to show you how to do this with a .htaccess file:

: Joel Lipman; Personal Home Page; 27 March 2014; Hits: 4406

What?
A note for myself on some code to convert a string of two names into a string made up of the first name and then using the initial of the second name.

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-- What I have
John Smith
Fred.Bloggs

-- What I want
John S.
Fred B.

-- What I have
John Smith
Fred.Bloggs
-- What I want
John S.
Fred B.

How?

Category: Personal Home Page :: Article: 556

: Joel Lipman; Web-Development; 28 October 2013; Hits: 6128

What?
A quick reminder on basic regular expressions.

Match Any Character — Dot
The dot operator '.' matches any single character in the current character set. For example, to find the sequence--'a', followed by any character, followed by 'c'--use the expression:

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a.c

This expression matches all of the following sequences:

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abc
adc
a1c
a&c

The expression does not match:

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abb

Category: Web-Development :: Article: 531

: Joel Lipman; Personal Home Page; 05 September 2013; Hits: 5656

What?
A quick note on a htaccess rewrite rule I'm liking.

What does it do?
What I type:

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http://www.mywebsite.com/blog/videos.html

http://www.mywebsite.com/blog/videos.html

Sends this to server:

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http://www.mywebsite.com/index.php?myFolder=blog&myFiles=videos

http://www.mywebsite.com/index.php?myFolder=blog&myFiles=videos

How?

Category: Personal Home Page :: Article: 520

: Joel Lipman; Hypertext Markup Language; 30 March 2013; Hits: 5533

What?
A quick article on if you were given a webpage coded in HTML, what methods in AutoHotkey could you use to separate out the HTML Tables into a ListView.

Why?
I want a snippet of code that replicates any HTML table.

How?
I've been trying various ways so I'm posting them here. My opinions on them change with the weather so until I do some benchmarking I won't know which ones best:

: Joel Lipman; Web-Development; 27 March 2013; Hits: 13812

Just a pretty picture on how hackers have created an infographic of the internet:

Source: BitBucket.Org - Internet Census 2012

Ordered List of over 1000 Items

: Joel Lipman; Cascading Stylesheets; 08 February 2013; Hits: 5620

What?
So many people asking this when the solution is a bit of aesthetic styling.

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ol{margin:4px}

-- yields
995.
996.
997.
998.
999.
000.      <-- What's going on here then?
001.
002.

ol{margin:4px}
-- yields
995.
996.
997.
998.
999.
000. <-- What's going on here then?
001.
002.

Or check out this screenshot of the issue:
Ordered List Issue

How?

Category: Cascading Stylesheets :: Article: 485

: Joel Lipman; Personal Home Page; 07 February 2013; Hits: 42866

What?
For those of you who use Preg_Replace. Preg_replace is a function that uses regular expressions to search and replace a string.

Why?
Because my understanding with regular expressions is shady and varies from language to language, I've written this article as a quick reference point.

How?

Add attribute xsl:nil=true on empty elements using XSLT

XML Schema Reference

SITS: Export field code and name

SITS: XET format for Export not available

301 Redirect using htaccess file

PHP: First name and Initial of Surname

Regular Expression Basic Usage Examples

htaccess Rewrites SEF URL and submits to PHP

Parse a HTML Table into a ListView

A picture of the Internet

Ordered List of over 1000 Items

Preg_Replace all strings between two tags

Cascading Stylesheets

Extensible Markup Language

XML Stylesheet Language Transformations

File Transfer Protocol

Hypertext Markup Language

JavaScript

MooTools Framework

Personal Home Page

Bootstrap

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