Additional Useful Data Source Types

Literal XML

The data-source command <literal-xml> lets you define xml output directly and "literally" in the data-source definition file.

<!-- Data source definition -->
<data-source>
    <literal-xml>
        <any-tag/>
    </literal-xml>
</data-source>

The root tag <literal-xml> is not included in the data-source xml output. In the example above, the generated xml will be:

<!-- Generated XML -->
<transformation-input>
    <any-tag/>
</transformation-input>

This data-source-type can be perfectly used in combination with parameter placeholders. For example, you can use something like this:

<!-- Data source definition -->
<data-source>
    <literal-xml>
        <any-tag>${foo}</any-tag>
    </literal-xml>
</data-source>

If ${foo} equals "hello world", the data-source output will be:

<!-- Generated XML -->
<transformation-input>
    <any-tag>hello world</any-tag>
</transformation-input>

Note that the contents of must be elements, simply placing text straight under the <literal.xml> element will not work.

Application Introspection

This content-source produces as its output a description of the entire application directory structure (=your configuration).

The generated content has a root-tag <application-introspection> and returns

• <directory name="x"> for any directory

• <file name="x"/> for all XML files. The content of the XML file is included as a child of this tag, except the directory xml-from-application. (Use the <xml-from-application> data source, not <application-introspection> to load content from such files.)

• <file name="x"/> for all non-XML files. In this case the content is not in any way included.

XML files must actually contain XML

If a file named *.xml does not in fact contain well-formed XML, this is an error.

No expansion of endpoint parameters

Parameters like ${foo} found in the file are not expanded in this type of content-source.

On-Demand Incrementing Number

<OpenEndpoints/> can generate unique auto-increment values and provide them as a data-source. Read On-Demand Incrementing Number for more details.