Function or approach to test if XML is well-formed? Design advice?

[Ken Fine]

I periodically receive a 5+ MB XML document that I hand-load into SQL Server
using SQLXML running under a DTS process.

Unfortunately, the document is human-created, and (very unfortunately) often
has invalid elements, which breaks the bulk load. I've been managing this
problem by loading the document into Visual Studio and using it to identify
the offending line numbers, and fixing it by hand. Given my truly minimal
coding skills when I designed the app way back when, this was the best
approach.

I'd like to automate this crummy work now.

Using ASP, is there a way to generically test whether a given snippet of XML
is well-formed?

I've mapped out a very crude approach that involves walking through the
document with ASP's regex matching abilities, assigning the contents between
<item> and </item> to a variable, testing that section for well-formedness,
parsing out the pieces of information I want, inserting these pieces to the
database, and looping as necessary to finish the job.

If there are better approaches that can accommodate the occassionally-broken
incoming XML, I'd love to hear suggestions. I do not have a formal CS
background and sometimes what should be obvious is not.

Thanks,
-KF

[Ken Fine]

FYI, I was using the colloquial meaning of "invalid" when I wrote
"...Unfortunately, the document is human-created, and (very unfortunately)
often
has invalid elements..."

What I meant was that sometimes a given section of XML is not well-formed.
Testing validation against an XML schema isn't the important thing here.

-KF

"Ken Fine" <ke*****@u.washington.edu> wrote in message
news:ce**********@gnus01.u.washington.edu...

I periodically receive a 5+ MB XML document that I hand-load into SQL Server using SQLXML running under a DTS process.

Unfortunately, the document is human-created, and (very unfortunately) often has invalid elements, which breaks the bulk load. I've been managing this
problem by loading the document into Visual Studio and using it to identify the offending line numbers, and fixing it by hand. Given my truly minimal
coding skills when I designed the app way back when, this was the best
approach.

I'd like to automate this crummy work now.

Using ASP, is there a way to generically test whether a given snippet of XML is well-formed?

I've mapped out a very crude approach that involves walking through the
document with ASP's regex matching abilities, assigning the contents between <item> and </item> to a variable, testing that section for well-formedness, parsing out the pieces of information I want, inserting these pieces to the database, and looping as necessary to finish the job.

If there are better approaches that can accommodate the occassionally-broken incoming XML, I'd love to hear suggestions. I do not have a formal CS
background and sometimes what should be obvious is not.

Thanks,
-KF

[Ken Fine]

I believe I may have found the answer to my own question. You can employ the
MSXML/XMLDOM parser to test, as follows:

<%@LANGUAGE="VBSCRIPT" CODEPAGE="1252"%>
<% Dim mydoc,strXML
Set mydoc=Server.CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM")

strXML="<book><author>author1</author><title>title1</title></book>"
mydoc.loadXML(strXML)

if mydoc.parseError.errorcode<>0 then
response.write "failure"
'error handling code, jump out of script
else
response.write "success"
' proceed with DB insert, etc...
end if

%>

4guys has a good article about all this:
http://www.4guysfromrolla.com/webtech/101200-1.shtml

Still curious if there's a better design approach for this. I'm wondering if
splitting the valid XML nodes into an array would be more efficient than
looping, but I don't know if it's possible to do the tests for
well-formedness if I try to generate an array.

-KF

"Ken Fine" <ke*****@u.washington.edu> wrote in message
news:ce**********@gnus01.u.washington.edu...

FYI, I was using the colloquial meaning of "invalid" when I wrote
"...Unfortunately, the document is human-created, and (very unfortunately)
often
has invalid elements..."

What I meant was that sometimes a given section of XML is not well-formed.
Testing validation against an XML schema isn't the important thing here.

-KF

"Ken Fine" <ke*****@u.washington.edu> wrote in message
news:ce**********@gnus01.u.washington.edu...

I periodically receive a 5+ MB XML document that I hand-load into SQL

Server

using SQLXML running under a DTS process.

Unfortunately, the document is human-created, and (very unfortunately)

often

has invalid elements, which breaks the bulk load. I've been managing this problem by loading the document into Visual Studio and using it to

identify

the offending line numbers, and fixing it by hand. Given my truly minimal coding skills when I designed the app way back when, this was the best
approach.

I'd like to automate this crummy work now.

Using ASP, is there a way to generically test whether a given snippet of

XML

is well-formed?

I've mapped out a very crude approach that involves walking through the
document with ASP's regex matching abilities, assigning the contents

between

<item> and </item> to a variable, testing that section for

well-formedness,

parsing out the pieces of information I want, inserting these pieces to

the

database, and looping as necessary to finish the job.

If there are better approaches that can accommodate the

occassionally-broken

incoming XML, I'd love to hear suggestions. I do not have a formal CS
background and sometimes what should be obvious is not.

Thanks,
-KF

[Brian Staff]

Ken,

The loadXML method is actually a function which will return true or false to
indicate whether the it did load or not. Failure to load is usually an
indication of it being mal-formed. The parseError object will then tell more
about the failure...

If objXMLDoc.parseError.errorCode <> 0 Then
MsgBox("Parse Error line " & objXMLDoc.parseError.line & ", character " & _
objXMLDoc.parseError.linePos & vbCrLf & objXMLDoc.parseError.srcText)
End If

Brian