[AccessD] Parsing XML as a string?

Not having followed the original thread... 

It sounds like a good place for a pair of classes.  One class would hold
each "snippet" based on the < characters.  A parent class would break down
the string into these snippets, load them into the snippet classes and hold
the snippet classes in a collection.  Once the huge string is parsed into
snippets, the parent class can process them by iterating the collection of
snippets doing whatever was required for each snippet.

Once you have processed the snippets, you can write the results out to a
table.

That is obviously a "big picture".

Can you paste a sample of the xml into an email so that I can see it.
Sorry, I wasn't following the original discussion.

John W. Colby
Colby Consulting
www.ColbyConsulting.com

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Greg Smith
Sent: Thursday, November 16, 2006 10:46 AM
To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com
Subject: [AccessD] Parsing XML as a string?

Hi everyone!

Ok...I admit that trying to import that XML file I had directly into Access
may have SEEMED like a good, "easy", idea...at the time...but after looking
around and from the comments here, the idea was...well..it sucked.
 If the XML they were sending to me were compatible then I might have had a
chance...but it's just not feasible.  There actually wasn't any way to
define it using a dtd/xls/xlst within my lifetime, so I'm going to have to
use a different approach.

The files they send as XML are not that large, so I could easily import them
as text, separate out what I need and put it into the required tables.
However, since they send it as a single string, it becomes harder to parse
it since there are multiple duplicated 'keys' that I need to pull from it.
And they're not necessarily in the same position all of the time.

I could import it as a single string into a memo field, but I can't figure
out how to disect a memo field string like that.

When I import it as text, I could break it down at the "<" characters,
importing each one into a separate columns, but I need them in rows, not
columns, to search and find the strings of data I need.

So, in summary, my only two choices (that I can think of) are:

1.  Import the XML as a single string into a memo and somehow parse that
into the data I need.
2.  Import the XML as text, separating it on the "<" characters into
columns, then somehow magically (transpose columns into rows?) transform
that to usable information.

ANY suggestions, short of retirement (although not a bad idea...), would be
GREATLY apprecaited!

Thanks!

Greg Smith



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